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August 14, 2012

Webinar - Assuring Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery with SIP Trunking


This is the second in a two-part look at the issues enterprises face surrounding business continuity and disaster recovery challenges as networks become all IP. In the previous article, I looked at the reasons this has moved to the forefront of IT manager concerns, particularly in the context of more and more of mission critical capabilities moving into private, public and hybrid clouds. 




What was highlighted then was that the reliability and resiliency of the public switched telephone network (PSTN), as measured against the “carrier-grade” standard of “five nines” (99.999) reliability/uptime, was something we all basically have taken for granted. It provided peace of mind that even in worst case scenarios we’d be able to communicate.   It was also noted that the move to IP rightfully has raised concerns that this level of performance might not be sustainable leaving IT managers to wonder, since theirs is the throat to get choked, if they really need to worry. 

The answer, as highlighted in the recent webinar I hosted, “Creating a Resilient Communications Environment Utilizing SIP Trunks,” is that SIP trunking services from providers such as SoTel Systems when used in conjunction with the Sangoma Vega Gateway (News - Alert), provides enterprises with what I termed “enterprise-class” resiliency and reliability, i.e., the performance that meets or exceeds that we have come to expect from the PSTN and with some added cost reduction benefits.

Reality is a properly implemented SIP trunking and gateway solution accomplishes the following:

  • An environment of interoperability that assures no endpoint or capability is isolated in case of a network problem that requires rerouting
  • Full interconnection and interoperability for legacy PBXs
  • Dial plan resiliency so everyone and everything are reachable
  • LAN connectivity
  • Fallback port in case of a failure on equipment that has alternate power supplies
  • E-911 support so responders know where you are and can reach you

 

The benefits of moving to SIP trunking are well known. They allow companies to replace physical PSTN trunks with virtual, broadband trunks, deployed over data connections. This enables full usage of things like VoIP, unified communications (UC) and a vast array collaboration and business process automation tools and applications. It does so based on a much more flexible architecture that delivers capabilities more effectively, is secure, easier to manage and reduces operational costs significantly. One of the big questions, as noted above, is “can I rely on it not just for daily operations but in times of emergency and at a level of quality that I expect?” The short answer is YES!

There is a reason research firms like Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert) are predicting for example that the North American SIP trunking market will grow from roughly $1 billion in 2011 to almost 7.5 billion by 2017. SIP-based solutions are reliable, extensible, interoperable, high-performance, secure and the business case for deployment is compelling. And, if things in the network go wrong, SIP-based solution have your back. The reason is that business continuity and disaster recovery scenarios with SIP your network will never be truly down because calls are automatically re-routed should an outage occur — to the right people and places with high quality of service. 

One of the interesting observations from the history of catastrophic events from a business continuity and disaster recovery perspective has been that when the PSTN is disturbed and cell phone operations have congestion problems, data networks work. This is true not just for data but for voice. SIP-based solutions allow companies to migrate legacy capabilities without disturbing functionality, performance or reliability. Not a bad value proposition.



Sangoma is a Gold sponsor of ITEXPO West 2012. SoTel Systems is also an exhibitor at the event. To be held Oct. 2-5 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, TX, ITEXPO (News - Alert) is the world’s premier IP communications event. Visit Sangoma in booth #920 and SoTel in booth #302. Jeff Dworkin, Director of Marketing, and Julian Nephtali, Product Manager, Sangoma will also be speakers at the event. For more information on ITEXPO click here.




Edited by Brooke Neuman