These top-achieving companies were more than twice as likely to use a hosted communications solutions solution compared to all other organizations. Aberdeen argues that this demonstrates the real-world usage of hosted VoIP is now strongly associated with improved uptime and reduced service impairment.
It might. It might not. It is equally plausible that the “best in class” companies do virtually everything better than is typical, suggesting that the relationship might be a correlation, but not a causal relationship..
Given the cost savings associated with a hosted voice solution, the support advantages associated with managed voice and now the service benefits in this maturing market, the value proposition for hosted VoIP has become much easier to articulate.
Aberdeen broke out its respondent base into three different categories for further profiling:
- small organizations of 50 employees or less
- medium organizations of between 51 and 2,500 employees
- large enterprises with more than 2,500 employees
Small organizations were most excited by hosted VoIP, with 32 percent of Aberdeen’s survey audience stating that they had already adopted this technology and another 35 percent planning to do so within the next 24 months.
These companies were driven first and foremost by budget and were simply seeking the cheapest solution. By moving to a hosted VoIP environment, these smaller organizations are more likely to achieve the “five 9s” (99.999 percent uptime) support that they may have assumed was only possible for enterprise-level accounts.
Hosted IP telephony is a logical choice for smaller businesses that want an affordable service with more features than they might otherwise be able to afford. It isn’t completely clear whether a typical small business will achieve the better reliability Aberdeen has found.
If a company operates with “best in class” procedures, that is likely to be true. And one can argue that a hosted solution will have higher uptime than a premises solution, under some conditions.
