Wednesday, January 24, 2007

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Report Says Businesses Prefer Buying Hosted IP PBX, Voice Apps From Voice-System Manufacturers; Presses Importance Of ITIL Certification

PR WEB January 23, 2007 Parsippany, NJ TelecomWeb reports that managed-services decision makers are biased to select voice-system manufacturers as providers of hosted telephony and voice applications. In addition, managed-services decision makers are beginning to include ITIL Certification as an important vendor capability.

In its January 2007 “InfoTrack for Enterprise Services: Managed Services Report,” TelecomWeb determined that most decision makers would prefer to purchase a hosted IP PBX or hosted voice application (e.g., enterprise-wide unified messaging, collaboration, etc.) from a voice-system manufacturer.

“Most of the attention on hosted telephony has been on the carriers, but some voice-system manufacturers, such as Avaya and Siemens, have been somewhat quietly successful in providing hosted versions of their popular IP voice solutions,” says Warren Williams, vice president and senior program director of the InfoTrack for Enterprise Services Program. “The reason for this bias is knowledge of technical excellence, trust or the scope and scale of resources. Of course, the carriers remain well-positioned to be the beneficiaries of this service-provider-selection predisposition. In fact, globally, a significant amount of buyers prefer carriers to provide these services, but these findings indicate there is a substantial market opportunity for voice-system manufacturers.”

He continues, “Another interesting finding is the preference of U.S. small-business decision makers to subscribe to hosted telephony services from wireless service providers, even though hosted offers from these service providers are not part of their portfolios. These findings mean several things. First, voice system manufacturers that already participate in this market have a decided advantage they should leverage, and those that do not should consider participating as quickly as possible. Second, technical excellence, and the breadth and depth of resources are important value-proposition elements service providers need to amplify. And third, there appears to be an opportunity to open new channels and partnering arrangements for the provision of hosted-telephony services.”

TelecomWeb also uncovered an emerging awareness and preference for managed-service providers when it comes to ITIL certification in the U.S. and EMEA markets.

“ITIL certification has emerged as a differentiation factor between services vendors. Originally, ITIL was a European phenomenon, but interest in this pedigree has spread to the U.S. market as well as throughout the EMEA region,” Williams says. “Most likely, this services-vendor certification will spread worldwide and will become a critical success factor.”

About the InfoTrack for Enterprise Services (IES) Program

The InfoTrack for Enterprise Services (IES) Program publishes six comprehensive, primary research studies each year. Its Managed Services track includes a semi-annual report that combines detailed competitor profile information, market trends and issues analysis, managed service offer details, end-user primary research, and market sizing and forecast data on the managed-services market. Other IES program tracks focus on the market for maintenance and professional services. For more information about InfoTrack for Enterprise Services, please visit www.telecomweb.com/marketresearch/enterprisesvcs/ or contact Mike O'Neill at moneill@telecomweb.com or at 973/602-0114.

About TelecomWeb

TelecomWeb encompasses global market-intelligence InfoTrack reports; daily e-letter TelecomWeb news break; TelecomWeb wireless,TelecomWebbroadband and TelecomWeb policy content packages; tariff consultancy Tarifica; and the Web-based business-telephony-product database TelecomTactics. To learn more about TelecomWeb, please visit www.TelecomWeb.com.

Contacts:

Debra Baker, managing editor,  dbaker@telecomweb.com