Managed IP voice services for enterprises to triple in Asia-Pacific

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA: The services revenue of managed and hosted IP voice service used for business in Asia-Pacific will increase almost three times over the next five years and hit US$3 billion in 2016, as enterprise increasingly migrate into opex-based service models, predicts Ovum.

According to a new forecast by the independent telecoms analyst, the number of extensions based on managed IP telephony systems such as IP Centrex, hosted IP PBX and on-premise managed IP PBX in Asia-Pacific will hit 26 million by 2016 – up from 8 million in 2011 and a CAGR rate of 27 per cent.

Managed services associated with premise-based IP PBXs will continue to dominate the enterprise market, but IP Centrex, which we define as a managed IP-based voice service from a carrier-grade multi-tenant platform hosted by the service provider, will present the biggest growth. The number of IP Centrex extensions in Asia-Pacific is predicted to hit 7 million by 2016 – a CAGR of 30 per cent from 2011 to 2016. Underlying this trend is the increasing enterprise awareness about the advantages of the cloud-based models.

Claudio Castelli, Ovum senior analyst, commented: “The preference will continue to be for on-premise IP PBXs but many companies will consider relying on a service provider for hosting and system management. There is hope for service providers building their cloud-based communication offerings, and we expect the preference for the hosted approach to rise as more offerings are released into the marketplace and customers realize the benefits of the new cloud models, such as faster deployment times, high flexibility to upscale (or downscale), outsourced management, and utility pricing.”