Legacy Installations: The Next Wave of SIP Trunks

The buzz at the SIP Trunk Summit at ITEXPO (News - Alert) in Miami last month was all about new market opportunities for VARs and SIP trunking providers. Cable companies have discovered the cost-savings potential of SIP trunking, and more verticals are following suit.

What’s the next step, then, to further expand sales of SIP trunking?

Legacy installations. While most have focused on the opportunity to migrate business customers from PSTN service in concert with an upgrade to a SIP-ready IP PBX (News - Alert) system, there is also a significant opportunity to migrate customers that maintain legacy (non-SIP) PBXs and contact center systems.

There are a great many companies that have yet to make the switch to an Internet-based PBX. Whether the issue be cost, lack of expertise in making the migration or anything in between, the fact is there are a large number of small to medium businesses looking to leverage SIP trunks but unable to upgrade to an IP PBX.

The solution is a SIP-capable enterprise session border controller deployed at the network edge between a wide area IP network and the corporate LAN, securely passing SIP signaling and VoIP media streams to and from the corporate LAN. When combined with a PSTN/SIP gateway, a traditional PBX can be compatible with SIP trunking service providers, and the benefits of SIP trunking services are then available to the enterprise without the need for upgrading the PBX.

This setup will allow enterprises utilizing legacy PBX and contact center systems to adopt SIP trunks easily and securely as a replacement for traditional PSTN voice services.

This combination of products also presents a significant new market opportunity for SIP trunking providers and their resellers, to approach new markets with the same cost and capability benefits that they provide to firms that have upgraded to an IP PBX. IT

Steven Johnson (News - Alert) is president of Ingate Systems (www.ingate.com).

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