Apparently, the legendary musician Bob Dylan was right: the times they are a-changin’. And it would seem like they evolving very quickly, too!

According to a May 2015 IHS Infonetics Enterprise Unified Communications and Voice Equipment report, pure IP PBX line shipments grew 17% in the first quarter of 2015.

So what’s that mean for traditional PBX? You guessed it.

Enterprise PBX is declining quarter by quarter and Hosted VoIP is on the rise among businesses and consumers. In a recent article by Infotech Lead, it was reported that enterprise PBX revenue has dipped by 6% to $1.6 billion during the first quarter of 2015.

We’d be lying if we said we didn’t see this coming. At FluentStream we’ve been seeing this first hand and just eight short months ago Software Advice and Google trends gave us some inclination of this as well. See how Google predicted this shift with search terms back in 2014.

In today’s global economy, the best (and usually most popular) technology is focused on innovation and making consumers lives easier, and the business telecommunications world is no exception.

In stark contrast to that decline, IP PBX numbers are as hot as the summer is heating up to be. In fact, in the research, pure IP PBX was the one segment to post year-over-year growth. This clear shift among businesses towards newer, advanced technology and equipment is being seen across all facets of business operations. Additionally, Infotech Lead also reported that growth has “started to slow on the unified communications (UC) front as well due to movement to the cloud.”

Obviously, PBX still exists, but consumers are interested in staying on the cutting edge, meaning there’s more room for Hosted VoIP to grow and flourish globally. With the telecommunications market moving away from older landline-based phone systems and technology and into the cloud, it is clear that for most small and medium-sized businesses, flexibility and accessibility are key components when reassessing their current systems and evaluating new options, which are both hallmarks of cloud-based business telecommunications technology.

So what’s this mean for your company? If you pride yourself on being innovators in your market, you need cutting edge tools to enable you to do that. At FluentStream, we are the innovators of the business phone and services market. We offer an advanced, innovative hosted VoIP solution that offers you the features and options you need to help improve your business operations. While enterprise PBX stagnates and declines, our Hosted VoIP cloud technology continues to find ways to stay engaging and relevant by keeping up with trends within our industry.

If you haven’t already, step into the cloud. It’s safe, secure, and easy to understand. Hosted VoIP will give you the tools and options necessary to help your business continue to grow, flourish, and compete in today’s market.