The ROI of SIP Trunking

SIP trunking offers immediate cost savings with payback periods as short as six months making it a great investment in the current economic climate.

In our experiences with customers, we see SIP trunk installations paying for themselves – meaning, the entire installation of a new IP-PBX (News - Alert), phones, network upgrades and the Ingate solution – in less than a year. One recent installation, which transitioned a nationwide network of medical facilities to SIP trunks, resulted in a 40 percent reduction in telephony costs and a very rapid payback. Empirical evidence from other installations confirms this result.

SIP trunks reduce costs in several ways:

• With SIP trunking it is no longer necessary to purchase expensive BRIs (Basic Rate Interfaces) or PRIs (Primary Rate Interfaces) allowing the user to buy just the capacity they need. This is a major cost savings since the enterprise no longer pays for unutilized capacity, and can ramp up capacity for seasonal business peaks or staffing increases as necessary.
• Most enterprises have more bandwidth capacity than they utilize for web traffic. This excess can be used to support voice traffic in many cases, allowing the enterprise to adopt SIP trunking without adding Internet bandwidth.
• The use of IP makes it possible to cost-efficiently use SIP trunks from multiple service providers, depending on optimal availability and the best rates (capitalizing on geography etc.). By routing calls to the cheapest service provider based on country codes, for example, significant savings can be achieved.

The productivity benefits with SIP trunking are also significant though less measurable. Once SIP trunking is deployed and the network upgraded to support it, a business has everything it needs in place to start using other SIP applications. These SIP capabilities can be used within the corporate network; they can also be extended outside the LAN, allowing satellite offices, remote workers and even customers to use VoIP and other forms of real-time communications applications to break down barriers of geography to share ideas and increase productivity.

In short, SIP trunking is one investment that is sure to be in demand in the leanest of economic times. IT

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

» Internet Telephony Magazine Table of Contents