Businesses look to consumer VoIP

IP telephony solutions have progressed further in the consumer market than the business market, TMCnet has said.

This is despite the technology being considered more important to enterprises than domestic users by VoIP provider developers, according to the communications and technology community.

Gary Kim, contributing editor at TMCnet, writes that information technology research and advisory company Gartner believes that consumers are fuelling unified communications and collaboration (UCC) innovations, including VoIP developments.

Mr Kim said that businesses are showing a "preference" for consumer-orientated VoIP solutions because they are less complicated than the UCC equivalents on offer to them.

"Consumer solutions have gained such prominence because they are affordable, easy to use and uncomplicated," he explained.

VoIP products aimed at the domestic market are likely to continue to appeal to the business market because they condense the benefits of UCC.

This potentially means that businesses would be open to more user-friendly solutions based on consumer products, Mr Kim added.

Unified communications (UC), including IP telephony solutions, are being seen as a vital business tool more and more by IT planners, Nemertes Research told VoIP information website SearchVoIP recently.