Aculab, a provider of enabling technologies for the communications market, reportedly announced it plans to become the first communications technology provider to offer a dual redundant SIP service in a core product line.

The DRSS service offering is enabled by Aculab’s (News - Alert) Prosody family of media processing products. The company plans to introduce the application later this quarter.

Session initiation protocol or SIP-based communications are one of the fastest growing services in business and consumer-based networks and applications. As many of these networks do not offer the same level of reliability and redundancy as traditional telecom networks, which rely on SS7 to ensure uptime and connection reliability.

With the DRSS service from Aculab, a VoIP developer, service providers are able to achieve IP network reliability similar to TDM-based SS7 networks. DRSS functionality enables hosted voice, conferencing, chat and contact center vendors to better meet the growing expectations of customers who expect “always on” performance from critical SIP-based services.

“A growing number of service providers are choosing an IP infrastructure to deliver mission critical services, like voice, conferencing – even emergency services – to consumers and enterprises,” Chris Gravett, sales and marketing director at Aculab, said in a statement.

“While IP networks offer a number of profound economic and operational benefits, they have evolved in a ‘best effort’ environment and do not possess the same inherent degree of resilience and redundancy as traditional PSTN networks,” he said. “Our Dual Redundant SIP Service helps these providers meet the needs of their customers by increasing the reliability of IP networks to a level similar to legacy TDM environments.”

Ovum, a London-based market research firm, has released estimates on the hosted communications services market, noting it is expected to grow from $2.2 billion in 2008 to roughly $9 billion in 2014. An overwhelming majority of this revenue is expected to be driven by SIP-based services.

The company also anticipates that enterprise-based hosted services, such as disaster recovery and business continuity services, will grow 30 percent over the next three years.

“The evidence clearly indicates that more and more communications services will come from the cloud,” Mike Sapien, senior analyst with Ovum (News - Alert), said. “The challenge for providers is that businesses and consumers expect SIP-based services to behave in a manner similar to the services they’ve experienced in legacy networks, even though the IP network still lags in terms of redundancy and performance.

Aculab’s Dual Redundant SIP Service is a unique solution that gives service providers a compelling and cost-effective tool that not only improves the overall quality of SIP-based services, but most importantly, satisfies the demands of a discerning marketplace,” added Sapien.

 

Aculab is working to delivery the important elements its customers and the industry demands. Service providers, network operators, and even enterprises, have a distinct need to evolve their capabilities, while continuing to leverage their existing infrastructures, which is something Aculab has emphasized with its product line.