Adoption of
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) by small- to medium-sized
businesses (SMBs) remains much lower than among medium and large
businesses, but not for lack of interest.
"I talk to a lot of SMB owners," said Michael Megalli, a partner
with Group 1066, a New York-based strategic marketing firm. "They
all want it, but the pain of getting it is too great."
Megalli said SMBs have to deal with too many technologies and
too many vendors to cobble together a VoIP system.
 | | | | | VoIP is not mature. It's not
idiot-proof.
Lisa Pierce
vice presidentForrester Research
Inc. |
| | | | | |
| |
|
"Because you have to deal with so many vendors to get VoIP set up,
there are so many potential points of failure," he said. "A blame
game starts. You get into a situation that when you do have a
problem, it makes it a much more difficult problem to fix."
Megalli said the immaturity of the VoIP market is unfortunate
because SMBs tend to be early adopters.
"SMB people tend to be technology optimists," Megalli said.
"They tend to believe a digital solution is better than an analog
solution. These are companies that have built distribution,
marketing and sales online. They've used mobile telephony and data,
laptops and mobile computing to great effect. It's helped them grow
and compete in a way they wouldn't be able to without that
technology. I think [VoIP] is definitely the right way to go, but
no one is getting it right [for SMBs] in terms of sales and
delivery."
Experts agree that VoIP technology offers SMBs a lot of
advantages, including cost savings. But the market for SMBs is
still too immature.
"SMBs definitely haven't been adopting the technology like
enterprises, mainly because the technology is complex. Anything
that's complex is going to be difficult for these small companies,"
said Gary Chen, an analyst at Boston-based The Yankee Group. "There
are so many pieces to it -- the phones, software, the network, the
Internet connection. Troubleshooting all that to get it to work
smoothly could be an issue. It is extremely time consuming for
these small companies."
Lisa Pierce, a vice president at Forrester Research Inc. in
Cambridge, Mass., said SMBs have very few IT resources. They might
have one person in-house who takes care of the company's computers.
Add VoIP to the equation, and many SMBs will struggle to manage the
technology.
"VoIP is not mature," Pierce said. "It's not idiot-proof. They
need someone to take care of it for them."
Pierce said VoIP vendors will need to concentrate on managed
services and bundle voice with other services such as Internet
connections in order to serve SMBs. And they can't serve up an
in-house box that the customer will have to maintain.
"These companies, the smaller they are the more interest they
have in having an
outsourced solution," she said. "If they're going to hire
someone, they're going to hire someone that can help them expand
their businesses. That willingness to rely on an expert means a
solution provider could come in with both a WAN and a LAN solution
for VoIP."
Recent survey research by Pierce showed that SMBs are 2.5 to
three times more interested than enterprises in managed
IP telephony and managed site-to-site or interoffice VoIP
services.
And that interest increases as the companies get smaller,
according to 608 SMBs that responded to Pierce's research. Thirty
percent of companies with six to 99 employees told Forrester they
are very interested in managed VoIP. Among companies with 100 to
499 employees, that interest dips to 25%. And among companies with
500 to 999 employees it dips further, to 18%.
Forrester also found that adoption rates shrink with the size of
companies surveyed. When asked about replacing a traditional
private branch exchange (PBX) system with an IP PBX system, 25% of
companies with 500 to 999 employees said they had already done so.
Companies with 100 to 499 employees reported a lower adoption rate
of 18%. Just 7% of companies with 6 to 99 employees had done
this.
Pierce said vendors just aren't aiming down-market.
"Vendors are primarily focusing their energies on the larger
part of the market, where customers have more money and more
resources to spend on this," she said. "There are some companies
trying to deal with down-market companies. But for the amount of
effort required, you need to get a fairly nice contract size to
make it worthwhile."
Chen said the VoIP industry is also struggling to get its
message across to SMBs.
"Even assuming they [SMBs] can get everything in place and working,
I think a lot of the overall benefits of VoIP haven't been
conveyed. Small and medium business owners aren't convinced it's
something they really need."
Chen said SMBs can definitely reap cost savings. Many SMBs are
distributed, with several small offices or home offices and
employees who travel a lot. These companies can save on
communications with VoIP. There are also productivity gains
associated with unified messaging and integration with
customer relationship management and other
technologies.
As the market matures and vendors improve their value
proposition for SMBs, more companies will make the switch.
"Adoption is going to slowly and steadily increase, but it's not
going to be an overnight revolution," Chen said.
"I think over time, as general supplier experience matures,
standards mature and the ability to predict performance evolves,
we're going to have a much wider range of choices on the services
side," Pierce said. "There will be a variety of packages of
services for SMBs to acquire."
Let us know what you think about the story; email:
Shamus McGillicuddy,
News Writer