A study by business analysts Frost and Sullivan, has revealed that  2009 was a good year for VoiP despite all thw worries surrounding the global economic downturn.

The Frost and Sullivan report, focused on the videoconferencing market, revealed a growth of 18 percent (equating to revenues of 184.2 million USD) for the North America market.

The report looked at two primary service models – Hosted Videoconferencing Services (services primarily bought by users that don’t have VoIP equipment) and Videoconferencing and Telepresence Managed Services (services which are operated by a managed service provider (MSP) and offer a full range of end-to-end services).

The article notes that despite the surprising growth in 2009, the videoconferencing marketplace is still far from reaching critical mass, with IT managers having to up bandwidths to cope with both video and communications, and integration between systems both new and old requiring the skills of and increading workforce of experts.

When projected to 2016, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) is expected to the be 18.4 percent, equating to a staggering 599.6 million USD.

A more detailed overview of the report can be found here.