One out of seven companies in Australia have already deployed some form of enterprise VoIP system, and the self-implemented VoIP model is still the most popular, according to a recent study.

According to IDC’s telecommunications survey 2005, this year we have begun to see growth in the managed/hosted IP telephony models, with carrier managed CPE IP PBX growing to a penetration level of over 8% from less than 3% in 2004. The reason why companies are installing enterprise VoIP systems continues to be based on lowering operational and hardware costs, despite the push on advanced applications.

IDC's recent study "Australia VoIP Services and Equipment Forecast and Analysis 2005-2009", found that migration to VoIP is already underway for Australian businesses and will reach over $850 million by 2009. Despite equipment vendor wars for leadership in the market, there will be no one winning solution in the market in the future. Telecom carriers, VoIP service providers, ISPs, systems integrators and equipment vendors will have to offer a diversity of solutions that fits the financial and communications needs of diverse business sizes and industry verticals present in this market.

IDC provides a few recommendations to the companies that want to capitalise on the growing enterprise VoIP market:

• Refine your target market - Companies that try to be everything for all businesses will have a harder time reaching their customers. Besides large telcos, other VoIP providers will need to choose a specific business size and/or industry vertical to target, to offer them specific bundled packages that fits their financial and communications requirements.

• Partner with the one that has the customer base - Reaching the customer is the first challenge new VoIP providers face, but they may not need to spend millions of marketing dollars to reach them. In order to reach small and medium businesses, VoIP providers can create alliances with councils, associations, chambers of commerce, etc that already own the customer base, and market their products via these channels.

• Educate your customer first - Lack of education of the benefits of VoIP and the potential security risks involved is still leaving some business on the edge. Help these companies by solving their questions via seminars, roadshows, etc, without the marketing pitch, and then offer your solutions.

• Bundle your broadband service with VoIP - For SMBs, bundled communications services is a strong proposition that fits their budget, and simplifies their billing nightmares. By choosing managed VoIP services it will ease their IT resources requirements.

• Offer additional value added services - VoIP deployments should not stop in phase 1 with only voice services, since additional value added services like video, presence and integration with company applications are the ones that will increase productivity, and at the same time provide the stickiness to the supplier of these services.

"In 2005 we will see the rise of managed/hosted IP telephony implementations, not only by telecom carriers but by systems integrators, broadband service providers and other providers. Also, enterprise VoIP equipment and services revenues are expected to grow this year over 70% and 73% respectively, and the growth will continue to be strong in 2006 and 2007," said Susana Vidal, IDC senior analyst for Telecommunications.