February 22, 2011

Bright Future for SIP Notwithstanding Prevailing Confusion

By Mini Swamy
TMCnet Contributor

Voice Report, a publication of CCMI, in conjunction with BizTechReports, an independent reporting agency that covers enterprise technology trends, conducted and published survey results about the adoption and utilization plans for SIP trunking in enterprises.

For the purpose of the survey, the responses of 138 executives with telecommunications decision-making responsibilities were considered. According to the research report, it was found that SIP trunking was poised for a big leap in the enterprise marketplace.

Of course, implementing of SIP trunking services was not as easy as it appeared. Although currently, more than one-third of the survey respondents are implementing SIP trunking services in a substantial manner and 56 percent plan to increase their investments shortly, executives are still confused and wary about how SIP trunking services will impact current telecom operations and future initiatives.

Given such a scenario, perhaps the only redeeming feature is the positive adoption trend occurring in spite of so much of confusion and trepidation. A lot of questions still remain unanswered and survey respondents still don't have a clear picture of the cost involved, the reliability of such services and more importantly, the interoperability.

This is brought out clearly in the results of the survey, which finds almost 45 percent being concerned about the reliability of SIP trunking services, while 27 percent had issues and questions about the reliability factor. The fact that 64 percent of respondents were not using SIP trunking currently could be a bit of a dampener, but the overall trend does appear to indicate that there is a bright future for SIP.

The bigger picture showed that 74 percent saw the consolidation of telecom services as a direct offshoot of using SIP trunking services and 60 percent of SIP trunking users report savings of 10 percent or more over their previous costs. Further positives about the survey are that while 56 percent plan to invest more in the services in 2011, 58 percent were planning to deploy such services in more locations in 2011.

In a related story reported on TMCnet, WAN optimization solutions are increasingly leveraged in federal healthcare environment. A new white paper from BizTechReports analyzes the role of wide area network or "WAN" optimization in this sector. According to BizTechReports, the quality of IT services on which federal health service providers depend directly impacts a broad cross section of Americans.

Mini Swamy is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Jennifer Russell