Although SIP (define - news - alert) is considered by many to be the de facto industry standard for call and session control, Frost analyst Shomik Banerjee pointed out that collaboration between and amongst vendors is still necessary to facilitate the standardization of the protocol. “Vendors will need to collaborate and test their solutions extensively,” he said. “Certification testing will also prove beneficial in assisting mainstream adoption of SIP-based applications and services.” In the enterprise communications space, work is ongoing, courtesy of the SIP-B (SIP for business calling features) initiative spurred primarily by a number of industry vendors, including Sylantro (news - alert), Siemens (news - alert), Polycom (news - alert), and others. This issue of SIP Magazine features several excellent articles dealing with SIP in the enterprise and contact center space. In his excellent article The Voice of Business, which appears on page 28, Hal Clark of BlueNote Networks explains how deploying a SIP-based enterprise communication platform today allows for use of existing telephone system investment while enabling process transactions to fully exploit communications for new business opportunities unencumbered by current limitations. On page 32 Robert Winder of Genesys Telecommunications (news - alert) Labs talks about how deploying new SIP-based services in the contact center requires significantly lower investments in time and money than in traditional TDM systems. Another element of SIP that’s being talked about in enterprise circles today has to do with SIP trunking. SIP trunking enables an organization to converge voice and data onto a pure-IP pipe, allowing applications and services to remain “on net” out into the service provider’s cloud. Among other benefits, this does away with the need for enterprises to deploy an IP/TDM gateway at the edge of their network. Not only does this save them the capital expense of deploying yet another piece of network equipment, it allows for the use of higher-quality codecs for voice transmission, resulting in CD (or better) quality conversations. One player you need to check out in the SIP trunking space is Sphere Communications. The company’s recently released Sphericall 5.0 is designed to enable service providers to deliver a new hybrid of hosted/premise-based IP PBX solutions, which gives enterprises a high-level of control over their communications environment as well as the ability to integrate on-premise IP communications with mission-critical business applications. SIP is increasingly being deployed in the enterprise. And, as the research from firms such as Frost and Sullivan underscores, SIP is becoming an increasingly vital part of the global enterprisecommunications landscape.
Greg Galitizine
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