Study: Full UC adoption by SMBs slow, but most use at least one piece

The concept of unified communications may still be getting a lot of headlines, but it continues to face a headwind in SMB adoption in North America, new research suggests.

AMI Partners research, 2011-2012 North America SMB Unified Communications Overview, contends that complete UC solutions deployment in the North American market is low, but it added that more than half of SMBs were using at least one piece of a UC solution.

"SMBs in North America have shown resistance to adopting full UC solutions, not realizing that they already pay for a number of the individual components", says Brian Galgay, manager of cloud services at AMI. "The challenge is guiding these SMBs to the full solution. Once SMBs break the initial pay-barrier, up-selling from a basic solution to a fully integrated UC solution will need guidance and structure."

But the potential, said AMI, is huge, with the UC market forecast to grow to $12 billion in North America by 2015. For service providers, AMI said, the key to getting a piece of that growth, may be to "segment their UC portfolio, targeting a range of SMBs from basic single-point solutions users to full UC solution customers and all segments in between."

Currently, it said, most providers offer either a full UC suite-which they're reluctant to break up--or only operate in specialized areas of voice, conferencing or messaging services. SMBs already are prone to patch together a mix from these fragmented offerings.

"Most SMBs need several UC components on a daily basis, but not necessarily all elements of a complete solution," said Galgay. "Currently, few vendors are willing to break apart their full UC suite to capture the share and revenues from a structured series of UC bundles mapped to SMB needs."

AMI said the SMB opportunity for UC components in North America over the next five years is expected to more than double. "The revenue opportunity in winning full UC SMB customers is large, but to do so vendors need to provide structure and guide these SMBs along the path from single components to a full UC solution", says Galgay.

For more:
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