MENA sees rise in demand for business class IP telephony

The rapidly growing small and medium businesses (SMB) sector in the Middle East and Africa region is driving the demand for internet protocol (IP) telephony implementation, as reflected by a recent survey conducted by Avaya Inc., a global provider of business communications applications, systems and services.

Following the partnership with Avaya in the US, Netgear has expressed its intention to support the communication vendor’s advanced business-class internet telephony solution targeting the SMB market in the Middle East. The company has also participated at the recent MENA Business Partner Conference 2008 which introduced the Avaya Quick Edition, an innovative peer-to-peer phone system for locations with 40 users or less.

According to recent statistics, the annual shipment for IP phones reached the 10 mln unit in 2006 and the global market for IP telephony shows a promising future with expectations of further growth up to 164 mln units by 2010 and USD 15 bln worth of IT services related to IP telephony migration within the next five years.

Reflecting the international scenario in IP technologies adoption, Avaya’s survey during a recent 14-city road show in the region, revealed that 71% of the 1,000 decision makers-respondents are ready to deploy IP telephony solutions.

“IP telephony is steadily gaining popularity within the ever-growing SMB sector as the technology promotes efficiency and professional interaction with customers and callers while holding down administrative and financial costs,” said Khalid Khan, SME Channel Manager – MENA, Avaya.

Avaya Quick Edition is an IP telephony solution with system intelligence built into each Quick Edition IP phone. It is a phone system tailored to the needs of small businesses or branches of large enterprises supporting the most commonly used telephony applications including voicemail, conferencing and auto-attendant. All the intelligence is built into the phones themselves, simplifying set-up and ongoing management.

“Peer-to-peer” technology (in which all the phones connect into each other rather than into a central PBX server) eliminates the single point of failure of traditional systems and simplifies set up for quick and easy installation. Further, each Quick Edition phone backs up the others’ features, so if one phone fails the others continue to work.