Standalone phone systems a barrier to VoIP take-up amongst small businesses

July 29, 2008, Vancouver, B.C.- Although the adoption of VoIP services amongst small businesses is growing, it is still a small fraction of its potential. The problem, says Sutus Inc., is a combination of expensive legacy phone systems that cannot be upgraded to handle VoIP, together with the industry’s earlier tendency to treat small businesses in the same way as large enterprise customers.

'A lot of these phone systems came with a significant price tag,' says Shawn Chute, EVP of Sutus, 'Many businesses have been reluctant to just let them go, particularly when they have spent time training staff how to use the various phone system features and have had to pay a third party every time they need a move/add/delete or change. Now add the fact that a lot of early adopters got their fingers burned with early VoIP services which had some service quality issues and you end up with a target market that needs careful handling.'

There are over 5.5 million small businesses with under 25 employees in North America and over 30% of them plan to upgrade their IP Communications in the next twelve months.

'For a small business, a new product or service has to work straight away, any downtime can be catastrophic. This makes small business owners more wary than larger enterprises of anything they haven’t used before. VoIP has a lot to offer small business customers, and to bring them on board it’s crucial that services be 100% turnkey and the upgrade process streamlined and flawless. Equally important is the need for services that meet small business needs rather than automatically assuming that enterprise feature bundles will be of use to a smaller operation.'

Just six months after launching its flagship product – a multi-service business gateway called the Business Central - Sutus has been recognized as a leader in the “all-in-one” solution space, they have been honored with six awards and have a growing stable of channel partners. The Sutus Business Central™, runs all of the phone and IT infrastructure for a small business and acts as a gateway for hosted services.

About Sutus

Sutus (www.sutus.com) provides small businesses with an enterprise quality all-in-one solution that delivers office network and telephone infrastructure that is affordable, robust and extremely flexible. The Sutus Business Central™ is the winner of INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine's 2007 product of the year award and IT Expo's 'Best Newcomer' award. It is designed specifically for offices with up to 25 users providing all core IT infrastructure as well as on-demand turnkey VoIP and other advanced phone and data services through Sutus business partners. The Business Central significantly improves a reseller's ability to easily service small business customers with locations of 25 users or less.

For more Sutus-related media information or images please contact:

David Matthews
Distinct Public Relations
davidm@distinctpr.com
+1 778 855 2335

Jon Paul Janze
Sutus Inc.
jpjanze@sutus.com
+1 778 371 5286 x2103