Small and Medium Enterprise Business Communications in the UK

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Demand for new products and services, including unified communications

Current usage of, and investment plans for, equipment and services

Before diving into where the market for communications is heading, we should clarify where the respondent sample is today, and how they are planning to invest over the coming year. Not too many surprises in figure one – except perhaps the levels of usage of certain technologies and services already adopted – particularly VPN. This is surprisingly high, but may well indicate how important applications such as email anywhere have become. The issue of ‘work anywhere’ may also explain why mobile devices (PDAs, Smartphones) are in use in two-thirds of the respondent sample.

Figure 1

Which of the following are used by your business?

Perhaps of greater importance than where respondents are today: in what are they planning to invest over the coming year? Most of the investment planning is in line with what is already in use – broadband is pervasive and in many cases will not require further investment, so slips down the chart in comparison with items such as laptops or mobile telephones. The greatest climber by far is Voice over IP (VoIP), which comes second only to laptops in the numbers that plan to invest; this would indicate that VoIP is getting ready for prime time today, and is proving compelling to companies of all sizes.

Secondarily, more than half the sample are also planning to invest further in VPN, mobile devices, and WiFi, again re-inforcing the feeling that ‘work anywhere’ and ‘email anywhere’ have become a serious and important part of a smaller business’s tools of the trade.

Figure 2

If you are going to invest in telecoms in the coming year, which of the following will you be considering??

Another way of looking at this issue is to consider buying momentum, which we have defined as the difference between the number that are planning to buy and the number that already own such equipment or use such a service. Subtracting the percentage ownership from the percentage wishing to invest gives an indication of the rate of growth of penetration of a technology or service. Please note that the results are relative – a negative number does not indicate negative growth, simply that the item in question already has a high level of market penetration.