“With GCI now being able to provide both sides of that, it’s kind of a one-stop shop to go from hosted and premise, and getting to continue to work with one supplier,” he said.

Smith believes that the time is right to introduce cloud-based UC services to its SMB customers that want high-end UC features but aren’t looking to spend thousands for on-site hardware, he said.

These services will also be a good fit for U.S. Communications Group’s large base of customers that are reaching the end-of-life of their communications equipment, Smith said. Many older telephony systems don’t have SIP trunking capabilities, for example. “I think these customers are going to find themselves interested in these newer features, but not equipment costs,” he said. 

The combination of customer demand – especially from the SMB space – and the reoccurring revenue stream cloud offerings produce is helping to make these services increasingly more attractive to solution providers, too, Magee said.

“I see probably doubling and tripling the amount of exposure we have to hosted/cloud services over the next year or two. I expect it to make a big difference going forward, and I look forward to that growth,” Smith said.