SOHO business spend to surpass $17B by 2015

The single office/home office (SOHO) segment is booming as innovations like cloud computing, videoconferencing and other developments in telecom and office communications make it easier to support a remote workforce, a new study says.

And the study, from In-Stat, forecasts that spending in the SOHO segment could surpass $17 billion in five years, especially if the economic conditions that helped spur SOHO growth continue.

In-Stat analyst Greg Potter said spending in SOHO will grow 20 percent over the next five years, although some products and segments will see much larger growth.

"Healthcare and social services, construction and retail trade market segments will experience the largest overall gains over the forecast period, each increasing their overall spend by $240 million" Potter said. "Cloud computing, as a product category, continues to experience the largest percentage of growth."

In fact, cloud computing is anticipated to grow some 150 percent, partly due to the nascent state of its offering.

Software as a service is also expected to see strong growth, increasing to almost $800 million in 2015.

In-Stat's research, "SOHO Markets for Telecom Services: Wireline Voice, Wireline Data, Wireless, Cloud Computing and VoIP in 20 Verticals," provides forecasts of U.S. business telecom spending for the 2010-2015 period with detailed segmentation by product category, size of business, corporate liable spending, individual liable spending and vertical market.

For more:
- see this release

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