“The technology has been around for some time but now we are starting the see the results of the hard work done by the IP vendor community. IP convergence is on the uptake with current estimates valuing the market at $2.5billion and rising by 35-40% annually. The foundations have been built in terms of the crucial elements such as designing reliable, feature rich products and educating the market of the benefits that IP brings, which the statistics bear witness to.
It is now a volume market with SMEs and smaller call centres driving the demand. The reason can be two-fold in that the technology currently available supports the old legacy world but has the functions of the new world so companies can sweat existing assets but also add additionally functionality to their comms set-up. Secondly, in these smaller organisations, there is often a lack of IT resources. Complexity scares them. Now simple installation and ease of use, sales are driven up.
Innovation is key to continued success and the channel have their part to play. For example, some vendors like Zultys have sought partnerships with ITSPs for PSTN breakout that will enable businss to extend their VoIP comms outside of the enterprise allowing for free inter-site calls, reduced IP connectivity costs and lower call costs in general. For resellers, innovation like this enables them to position themselves as leading the IP telephony revolution by offering a new range of IP services including free and low cost calling rates over a core IP network.”