U.S. SMBs spending $30B on converged communications and managed services in 2007, says AMI Partners

It is known that Small and medium businesses in the United States have been slow to adopt converged communications.But total SMB U.S. IP communications and managed services opportunity to be over $30 billion in 2007 and growing at a CAGR of 15.6 percent through 2010.
 

It include managed IP-PBX, managed security, managed backup/business continuity, managed networks, VPNs and web hosting in the U.S. SMB space..

SMBs are migrating toward converged communications solutions over a single IP network for voice, data, video to support ubiquitous communications, and outsourcing processes which their internal IT staff are unable to manage.

This market has  increased interest and competition from global and regional voice/data vendors, software vendors, internet/portal vendors, and large traditional telecom service providers.

SMBs are going ahead and adopting a mix of IP communications products and managed services in a best-of-breed manner to meet their immediate needs.

Some facts related to this are as under :

IP TelephonyUS SMB IP-PBX shipments now exceed traditional TDM-PBX (including key systems) systems,IP-PBX penetration among US MBs rose from 20% in 2005 to 25% in 2006, Hosted VoIP penetration, currently under 5% of US SMBs, is now entering a high-growth phase that will drive SMB productivity well into the next decade.

Managed ServicesWith in-house IT staff busy addressing basic break-fix issues, both SBs and MBs are looking to outsource non-core IT services, Key functions outsourced to managed service providers are security, backup/business continuity, network management, e-mail services, web-hosting, applications and database hosting, and IT Infrastructure management.