More businesses turning to VoIP

New research, by business communications software firm Interactive Intelligence, has identified a growing trend for businesses to deploy hosted services, VoIP, video and unified messaging.

Interactive Intelligence surveyed 2,500 global enterprise and contact centre customers. While 90% of those surveyed said they didn’t currently use hosted services, a substantial 72% said that they planned to use them in the future.

The survey also showed that the use of video, unified messaging, and VoIP is on the increase, with video seen as giving a competitive advantage to contact centres, while unified messaging was a key priority for 56% of respondents.

Nearly 70% of respondents said that they had already deployed VoIP, and of the remainder, 56% said they planned to deploy it over the next 12 months.

The research found that the respondents’ top evaluation criteria for new communications solutions was open standards.

Taken with the substantial uptake of VoIP, Interactive Intelligence believes this points to a need for vendors to deliver VoIP solutions using the open SIP standard, rather than IP PBXs.

The majority of those surveyed were located in North America, with the remainder coming from Europe, the Middle East and Africa.