According to the telecom analyst's latest forecasts released last week, spending on web conferencing technology is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of more than 18 per cent in the next five years. Overall, businesses are expected to spend $2.7 billion on web conferencing worldwide by 2015, up from the $1.2 billion spent in 2010.

Ovum senior analyst Richard Thurston says such findings indicate that web conferencing is becoming increasingly popular across companies of all sizes, allowing them to reduce costs, hit carbon reduction targets, increase productivity and decrease time to market. "This means a radical scaling back of face-to-face meetings and therefore corporate travel," he says. "We are seeing a revolution in workplace communications, and at the heart of this is video-based web conferencing. The technology is maturing and can now offer a quantifiable and much stronger return on investment."