Forrester: CaaS heats up

According to Forrester Research, the Communications-as-a-service (CaaS) market is heating up. CaaS delivers voice, conferencing, contact center, IVR, and unified communications services from services providers' or vendors' networks and secure platform. Customers typically pay per user, per month, or per transaction for full life-cycle support. Providers offer sophisticated applications in the cloud, allowing companies to deploy advanced unified communications services quickly and affordably across a distributed environment. Surveys show that there is high interest by enterprise communication decision-makers in adopting CaaS services in the future.

Forrester report

Home office: Many advantages

Oliver Gassmann, chairman of the Institute for Technology Management at the University in St. Gallen: Home office work clearly decreases illness and absences. Occurence of burn-out syndroms is 45% lower (5% instead of 48%) when employees are working periodically from home. An average office worker is disturbed every 11 minutes and needs after each break 8 minutes till reaching full concentration. Also unproductive meetings and noise of other employees are disturbing the flow of work. Home office workers are not only more focused, but also faster.

Survey in the US: 60% of Americans prefer home office work for a better work-life balance. Around 30% have more time for their family due to home office work. 47% appreciate that due to home office work, they spare travel time.

Mathias Binswanger, professor for political economy at the advanced technical college of Nordwestschweiz: Home office work is reducing stress and increasing quality of life. In Switzerland, productivity could be improved 30% due to home office work and till 2020, home office use will increase tenfold.

Nearly 300 mio. will use mobile VoIP by 2013

There will be 288m mobile voice-over-IP (VoIP) users by 2013, generating annual revenues of USD35.2bn, according to market research firm In-Stat. More than 50% of these will use online mobile VoIP providers, nearly 33% will access the service via their mobile operator or 3G MVNO, and 11% will use 4G WiMAX or LTE operators. According to the report, the Asia-Pacific region will see the biggest growth rates and overtake Europe to become the market leader.

The growth of VoIP services and 3G networks has led analysts to speculate that all calls made via mobile phones will eventually be VoIP. The services are

• much less expensive than traditional phone calls, especially internationally, and
  
• could force operators to cut the prices of mobile plans with inclusive minutes.

For this reason, operators are reluctant to embrace VoIP.

Mobile VoIP set to explode

• Number of consumers using mobile VoIP will approach 288 million by 2013
• 50% of these users will get their service from an online mobile VoIP provider, under 1/3 will use it over 3G through a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) or wireless operator, and 11% will use a WiMax or LTE operator
• 10 years from now more than 50% of mobile voice traffic will be carried end to end using VoIP
• It is clear that mobile VoIP is starting to become a lot more palatable to wireless operators if they are able to retain some of the control

Full article on Connected Planet

Research companies' positive view on Hosted/IP/VoIP PBX

Several research companies incl. In-Stat, GIA and Synergy Research Group believe in an increasing Hosted/IP/VoIP PBX market:

• Hosted PBX offers business-specific benefits
• Interest in IP PBX is revitalizing
• VoIP PBX appeals to businesses due to the innovation, costs savings and potential revenue generation it offers
• superior business-grade flavour of VoIP offered by IP PBX is attracting businesses to it
• IP PBX is more acceptable to IT managers in terms of management, security and integration
• VoIP adoption by businesses is expected to regain momentum in 2010

Full article from Telappliant

Cisco: VoIP Enables Innovation

Two Cisco Execs describing VoIP technology for SMBs:

• VoIP has enabled innovation in telephony like nothing before it
• We will see higher adoption rates of video telephony with small business customers
• Each user can have the same basic experience, regardless of fixed location or mobile

Full article on Phone+

TMC: Over 100 mio. VoIP subscriptions worldwide

The latest analysis from Point Topic reveals that by the end of September 2009 VoIP subscriptions had grown by 15% in the first 3 quarters of the year to pass the 100 million milestone. The number is close to 110 million today.

Top 10 Countries - VoIP subscribers (not softclient: Point Topic includes only verifiable IP-based telephone subscriptions in these statistics. Services like Skype which are softclient (ie originating on the PC) and which do not report user numbers but only ''minutes'' of calls are excluded.)

1 USA 22,704,900
2 Japan 21,368,000
3 France 16,125,000
4 Germany 8,100,000
5 China 5,000,000
6 South Korea 4,846,839
7 Italy 4,187,000
8 Canada 3,607,318
9 Netherlands 3,446,400
10 UK 2,950,000

"Conditions are starting to become common that should allow for faster growth in the next couple of years, especially when VoIP is provided for a low price in a bundle with broadband and TV. There's certainly enough headroom in enough markets to see adoption increase markedly," says Bosnell.

Full report