IP Communications Featured Articles

Recently, Sonus Networks (News - Alert) unveiled the results of its “2014-2015 Unified Communications, SIP, and SBC Plans and Priorities: What’s Hot and What’s Not,” and it seems the UC market remains in a period of growth and adoption.

The study represents a global response of over 10,000 employees and mirrors a 2012 study—“2012 SIP Trunking' State of the Market”—completed by Webtorials and illustrates the role SIP trunking has played in UC and SBC adoption.

“The ‘2014-2015 Unified Communications (News - Alert), SIP, and SBC Plans and Priorities’ report shows that two years later, enterprises continue to seek the advantages that come along with unifying their communications,” said Steve Taylor, editor-chief and publisher for Webtorials. “The shift we are seeing in UC today, however, is the move toward SIP-based solutions, future plans to move to the Cloud, and the understanding of importance that Session Border Controllers bring to securing real-time communications.”

UC continues its adoption tear with over 70 percent of respondents having either a fully or partially implemented in their enterprise. Although, 65 percent of respondents stated having premises-based UC solutions, do not be fooled, the demand for cloud is growing and it would seem that the enterprise standard will be a hybrid solution—respondents see this as the optimum approach for UC adoption moving forward.

Some of the other highlights from the report include a major jump in awareness, as familiarity with UC solutions and in particular Sessions Border Controllers increased by over 80 percent since 2012. Security is no laughing matter; SBCs ensure a high level of service and security so the increase in education on them is a positive sign.

“We’ve seen Unified Communications evolve from voice and video, to incorporate real-time collaboration tools which improve productivity. The explosive growth among enterprises implementing SIP Trunking has further enabled the ability to knit together previously disparate technology platforms,” said Wes Durow (News - Alert), vice president of Global Marketing, Sonus. “When deploying these new communications services, the ability to leverage Session Border Controllers improves the security, interoperability, and quality of service challenges often faced when working across multi-vendor networks.”

The UC market is expanding as more enterprises adopt the technology and experience the benefits for themselves. Business communications is no longer simply picking up the phone and dialing a number or even writing an email, things move in real-time and the enterprise requires sophisticated tools. Only time will tell what the market does, but it is apparent the future is bright for UC innovation and deployment.