Conferencing spend '$2.6bn by 2012'

An estimated $2.6 billion will be spent by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) on conferencing technology by 2012, according to a new report.

Research by AMI Partners revealed that the companies, defined as having up to 999 employees, will need IP-based conferencing to help them lower costs as they become more mobile in nature and geographically distributed.

"In today's tough economic times, driven by the global economic crisis, high travel costs, increase in gas prices and natural disasters, the relevance of conferencing solutions increases enormously," said Sanjeev Aggarwal, the company's vice president for SME infrastructure solutions.

"[SMEs] are turning to conferencing solutions that will help reduce costs and provide clearly identifiable ROI and drive business growth."

The figure of $2.6 billion represents compound annual growth of 5.9 per cent from 2006, when the total was $1.8 billion.

AMI revealed that hosted IP-conferencing is becoming more accessible, though many medium-sized companies (100 to 999 employees) are also using onsite solutions, due to the increasing deployment of IP-PBX hardware.