Photo by Kirill Balobanov on Unsplash

Despite appearing to gain momentum, global enterprise telephony and Unified Communications (UC) taken as a whole lost four points last year, with the market closing at an estimated $8.7 billion valuation. The sub-par results are attributed to reluctance from business owners to ditch their aging PBX equipment which, ironically, causes more headaches than benefits.

Last week, the fine gents at Infonetics Research put forth a well-knitted analysis of the present situation in telecoms with a focus on last year’s adoption rate for UC solutions.

After doing what researchers do best – crunch numbers – Infonetics felt confident to report that “…the global enterprise telephony and Unified Communications (UC) market closed down 4 percent in 2014, to $8.7 billion, as businesses continue to hold off new purchases and upgrades of PBX equipment despite improving worldwide economic conditions.”

While some have goggles, most are in blinkers

The IHS-owned company also makes an interesting point regarding “the health of the evolving UC applications segment.” An impressive 20 percent spike was recorded here. In other words, despite increased awareness and constant breaking of technological barriers, most business owners remain adamant to the benefits of hosted PBX / VoiP solutions.

Infonetics attributes this growth to high demand for tools that have been specifically designed with collaborative productivity in mind. In plain English, some businesses simply know what’s good for them and they’re not shy to pick their perks.

Diane Myers, principal analyst for VoIP, UC, and IMS at Infonetics says “The enterprise telephony market continues to be tough. Just as we see one area begin to improve, it’s offset by slowdowns in geographies or market segments.”

Myers notes that slowing business purchases and competitive pricing have created unpredictable swings in the industry. However, at least the United States has woken up and smelled the roses. There, communications are moving to the cloud faster than anywhere else.