April 17, 2012

SIP Trunking Adoption Drove ESBC Market to Strong 2011

By Beecher Tuttle
TMCnet Contributor

The enterprise session border controller (ESBC) market grew 60 percent in 2011, powered significantly by strong adoption rates of SIP trunking technologies, according to a new report from market analysis firm Infonetics (News - Alert) Research.

As the primary driver of ESBC sales in 2011, the market for SIP trunks grew a whopping 88 percent over 2010 numbers. The firm anticipates that the ESBC market will generate revenues of $527 million by 2016 as enterprises recognize the growing need for security, interoperability and network border traversal.

Although North America continues to make up the majority of the ESBC market, the rising adoption rates of enterprises across the globe will help even the playing field over the next few years. As expected, industry leader Acme Packet (News - Alert) was the market leader in 2011 with a 34 percent worldwide revenue share. Companies including Cisco, Avaya, Sonus and Siemens also found success in the ESBC market in 2011.

In a separate study, Infonetics found that a third of North American enterprises currently use SIP trunks to migrate to VoIP. A total of 42 percent plan to make the transition to SIP trunking technologies by 2014. All that said, T1 lines are still the most popular trunking medium today, and will continue to be for the next several years. However, SBCs will eventually replace the TDM to VoIP gateways that are used today.

“Centralization, easier management, and switching as part of infrastructure upgrade top the list of reasons businesses are deploying SIP trunking,” says Infonetics.

The research firm found the SIP trunking market to be especially wide open for service providers, “with no single provider dominating the landscape today.” However, AT&T and Verizon were found to be the most popular providers, with companies like RingCentral (News - Alert), Comcast, Bandtel, Charter, 8x8, CenturyLink and Sprint falling into the second tier of providers.

Edited by Jennifer Russell