The enterprise voice over IP (VoIP) trend forecast for 2015 is heavy into the cloud and mobility as more enterprises seek economical telephony infrastructure to support the changing nature of their workforce. Here are five enterprise VoIP trends to watch in 2015.
Hosted PBX Gaining Popularity in 2015? These 5 Signs Say “Yes!” by Sheldon Smith talks up the popularity of hosted private branch exchanges (PBXs) in 2015. It’s a trend I’m seeing myself in the market. Moving to a cloud-based PBX frees businesses from many of the maintenance and repair costs that on-premises PBXs are known to have. It’s a common-sense move in today’s market.
Hosted PBXs also bring with them a slew of business user features that cloud VoIP providers can enable for their customers using a range of pricing models. The economics and rich feature sets of hosted PBXs are bound to remain a dominant VoIP trend even beyond 2015.
One of the 2015 VoIP trends that the Business Communications Trends in 2015 Modulis blog post mentions is more back-end analytics. VoIP’s move to the cloud makes possible the capability to support a range of back-end performance management analytics. Back-end analytics give customers another tool to compete better in the market because they have optimal control over VoIP communications.
More business desk phones are going to find their way to equipment closets and surplus auctions in 2015. Corporate-owned personally enabled and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) mobile devices are going to subsume the role of the business user’s primary phone handset. The changing nature of today’s workforce, with increasing numbers of mobile-first and remote workers, is going to propel this trend well beyond next year.
After writing about customer relationship management (CRM) this year for it.toolbox.com, I came across the exciting trend of VoIP integration with other cloud platforms like CRM, office productivity, and other back-office applications. A small to medium-sized business or any enterprise wanting to test VoIP or unified communications (UC) technologies may also get its first exposure through Microsoft Office 365 or Google Apps for Work. These cloud platforms may serve as an introduction to VoIP and UC (think Microsoft Lync and Google Hangouts as gateways to full-scale VoIP solutions).
When businesses get a first taste of VoIP, options in the market abound for integrating leading cloud-based VoIP systems with cloud VoIP platforms. I expect this trend to accelerate in 2015.
2015 is going to bring the further convergence of enterprise VoIP and UC platforms. I don’t expect to be writing about VoIP and UC as separate subjects for much longer, because this convergence is beginning even now to accommodate today’s changing needs for mobile-first, BYOD, and geographically dispersed teams for communications and collaboration.
The enterprise VoIP trends shaping up for 2015 will further help VoIP gain ground over traditional business telephone systems. Enterprise VoIP is going to become ubiquitous as the cloud and mobility become prime platforms.
