Only 10 per cent of SMBs are using unified comms

Unified comms use is still low amongst SMBs, but more than two-thirds want to adopt UC systems

A survey of UK and US SMBs, investigating their use of unified communications, has predicted 400 per cent market revenue growth (to $143.5 billion) to 2024, along with some interesting statistics on phone use, remote working and the actual spread of UC systems.

According to Dubber, the cloud call recording software solution company that amalgamated the data (from sources including Grand View Research and Salesforce), only 10 per cent of UK and US SMBs use UC systems; although 65 per cent of respondents want to implement one, and 68 per cent expect to have replaced their existing communication systems with UC by 2018.

Remote workers are a key target market for UC vendors, and Dubber found that the number of non-self-employed home workers has risen by 103 per cent since 2005. This might also be a contributor to the increasing use of mobile phones as a main phone system: now at 46 per cent among the surveyed SMBs. Rising mobile use presents an opportunity for vendors, as these devices can be converted to a UC endpoint with a single app download.

The phone is still perceived as a key business tool, with 77 per cent of SMBs saying that they use a phone for ‘some' of the day; although fewer than half of SMBs (38.3 per cent USA, 48.8 per cent USA) said that they used conference calls. Instant messaging (71.7 per cent UK, 79.3 per cent USA) and voicemail (67.5 per cent UK, 57.9% per cent USA) use was found to be high.

Despite the comparative lack of popularity of conference calls, it was second (20 per cent) on the list of services that SMBs want from their UC provider: first (40 per cent) was call recording. Instant messaging (19 per cent) came close to drawing with conference calling, although call forwarding (12 per cent) and voicemail (7 per cent) were far behind.