Small businesses face a wide variety of challenges and pressures. According to a recent report by AMI-Partners, unified communications [1] could help mitigate a number of those issues, but the SMB market is being slow to embrace all-in-one corporate communications.
According to the report, many companies in the SMB space are moving toward unified communication in small steps, using hosted tools to obtain individual components of full unified communication suites. Tied to this is the discomfort many small businesses feel when it comes to integrating all the pieces of full unified communication capabilities.
When it comes to choosing components, there's no single approach taken by small businesses. The market seems split down the middle between those favoring "best of breed" solutions, and those eager for all components to come from a single vendor.
For more:
- Tech Target has a study summary here [2]
Related articles:
Nortel, Microsoft unveil roadmap Article [3]
Unified comms jam traffic Report [4]
Verizon business enables UC for VoIP customers Release [5]
Microsoft unveils SMB VoIP systems Article [6]
Links:
[1] http://www.fiercevoip.com/story/spotlight-microsoft-ocs-all-that-and-a-bag-of-chips/2007-06-28
[2] http://searchvoip.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid66_gci1276217,00.html
[3] http://www.fiercevoip.com/story/nortel-microsoft-unveil-roadmap/2007-01-19
[4] http://www.fiercevoip.com/story/unified-comms-jam-traffic/2007-08-30
[5] http://www.fiercewireless.com/press-releases/verizon-business-enables-unified-communications-voice-over-ip-customers
[6] http://www.fiercevoip.com/story/microsoft-unveils-smb-voip-systems/2007-10-04