HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:
The U.K. leads Europe in IP adoption with 18 percent of 50-plus-employee SMBs, 10 percent of 10-to-49-employee SMBs and 3 percent of the smallest SMBs already using IP communications services.
North American SMBs have higher IP adoption than the U.K., scoring 10 percentage points higher for IP adoption in all employee sizes.
Future adoption will be swift and significant, reaching a total of 72 percent in the next two years.
Around half of all deployed IP communications solutions are hosted vs. on-premises equipment.
Service provider reputation and processes are equally important to economics for SMBs yet to adopt IP communications.
Cloud migration is inevitable among the 50-plus-employee segment, with 96 percent of respondents planning to shift more IT services to the cloud in 2014.
“Projected IP adoption rates are very large on both sides of the Atlantic, with Europe set to catch up with the progress already shown by North American SMBs,” said Chris Carabello, director of market development at Metaswitch. “Service providers must act now to take advantage of this evolution by driving the right go-to-market strategies.”
The Metaswitch 2013 SMB Survey was conducted this spring in North America and Europe, by independent firm GrowthMark, as part of the ongoing MarketVisions program. In Europe, the survey involved a total of 500 owners and decision-makers at small and medium-sized business in the U.K., France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Hungary and Croatia.