IP Telephony Remains a PBX Business, But Hosted is Taking Share

IP telephony adoption has increased dramatically in the last two years: from 17 percent in 2008 to 27 percent in 2010, an increase of 59 percent, among small and mid-sized companies, according to Consultant Dan Sachar of Inzenka, a management consultancy.

Based on a survey of 700 small and medium businesses, Inzenka, a management consultancy, estimates that about 33 percent of small and medium business IP telephony deployments use hosted IP telephony.

About half of those respondents who have deployed IP telephony report they have adopted a premises solution. About 19 percent of respondents indicated they are buying a converged access service of some sort, including SIP trunking, bonded copper. It isn't completely clear what IP telephony solution is being used, for those 19 percent of respondents.

But it would seem logical that there is an IP PBX on premises at those locations, or the purchase of a SIP trunk or other access method that would qualify as "IP telephony" would not make much sense.

That assumption would be in line with past surveys that suggest 75 percent of so of new IP telephony deployments use a premises system, while about 25 percent use hosted IP telephony.