Small businesses help UC spending increase

Large businesses seem to be the holy grail for telecommunication providers. More employees means more phones and a larger system to implement, but it is actually small businesses that are helping to surge the UC market.

New statistics from business communication intelligence provider InfoTrack show that small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have an interest in UC technologies and services.

According to the survey, SMBs with fewer than 500 employees represent 46 percent of U.S.-installed base VoIP lines but account for only 30 percent of the spending on UC application spending. However, during the next five years, the growth of SMB spending will be more than twice the rate of spending of larger enterprises – those with more than 500 employees.

“The appeal of UC to SMBs is understandable,” wrote Dan Berthiaume for MSPmentor. “After all, SMBs operate at a considerable competitive disadvantage with larger rivals, and timely access to data is even more vital to their survival.”

Berthiaume went on to say that SMBs are also more reliant on remote employee-owned devices, since they are less likely to have the resources to afford office space or IT infrastructure, making UC a highly desirable means of bringing employees on a wide range of personal devices together.

One other factor adding to SMBs’ desire to spend in UC is that they are much less likely to have in-house expertise or resources necessary to deploy or manage a complete UC solution. Handling a number of features such as messaging, voice and video, a centralized system requires upkeep and a managed IT consulting like CTI Technology to help any SMB get up and running.