VoIP Call Center

A recent report from market research firm In-Stat shows that the growth of hosted services -- specifically hosted applications, or SaaS (News - Alert) (software as a service), as well as other services provisioned by a third-party provider -- are driving steady revenue growth for managed service providers.


The report, “On-Demand Offerings Fueling U.S. Managed Services Growth,” predicts that the on-demand hosted services market will continue to see steady growth.

Specifically, the report forecasts a 7 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR), overall, for managed services through 2012.

The report finds that although a majority of U.S. businesses currently have their software and systems in-house, increasing network complexity and the difficulty in network maintenance and troubleshooting will force many of them to transition to the on-demand model of delivery. This, in turn, will result in steady annual revenue growth for the managed services market.

The report also provides a useful breakdown of the types of managed services that are available -- by business function, business size and vertical market. It suggests that providers will need to tailor their managed services offerings accordingly, if they are to be successful in this competitive new market.

"Though business decision-makers have indicated that they plan to out-task major business functions like security, storage, phone system management, et al, at a moderate pace, adoption of third-party application hosting is the fastest growing area in managed services," said Jeff Jernigan, In-Stat (News - Alert) analyst, in a press release. "The on-demand hosted application model has seen acceptance in the small-to-medium business market, and now demand is rising among enterprise-sized firms. The on-demand model will also hasten adoption of utility computing services."

Today’s on-demand solutions are seeing rapid adoption on the call center industry. Web-based solutions such as 3CLogic's ôBelyx, for example, let a small business deploy a full featured VoIP call center in about 30 minutes – all that is needed is a high speed broadband connection, some PCs and the headsets. The multi-tenant platform delivers ACD, IVR and predictive dialing capabilities, and even comes bundled with its own VoIP service. With small businesses now able to afford these advanced, “turnkey” hosted solutions, it’s not surprising to hear that we will see continued strong adoption of these solutions, and that this in turn will fuel the now burgeoning managed service market.

For more information about In-Stat, or to get a copy of the report, visit www.in-stat.com.

For more information about 3CLogic’s ôBelyx, visit www.3clogic.com.

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Patrick Barnard is Assignment Editor for TMCnet and Associate Editor for Customer Interaction Solutions magazine. To see more of his articles, please visit Patrick Barnard’s columnist page.