According to a new study from IHS (News - Alert), there’s plenty of room to strike it big in the SIP trunking market, even despite a certain amount of inertia in the field.

There are plenty of players in the SIP trunking market, the IHS study revealed, but there really aren't any dominant players, so there's a lot of room to run in such a market. There are also plenty of potential customers afoot, too, as 45 percent of respondents currently use SIP trunking for at least some voice connectivity. That number is set to reach 62 percent by 2017, partially thanks to the conquering of one of the biggest hurdles in the SIP trunking market.

As explained by IHS' Diane Myers, who serves as research director in information management systems (IMS), voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) and unified communications (UC), perhaps the biggest impediment to SIP trunking is sheer inertia on the part of potential buyers. While SIP trunking itself has been around for some time, Myers elaborated, many companies are unable to get in on the action due to contracts that are currently in place for legacy systems like T1 lines. Myers further noted that these aren’t “overwhelming barriers”, but rather temporary, as SIP trunking has several “key drivers” in its favor. Those key drivers include a greater flexibility and easier—thus less expensive—management options, along with greater reliability.

So the burdens to the market are fairly clear, as are the opportunities found therein. More businesses are interested, though few have actually made a complete move. Even for those who have brought in SIP trunking so far, only about 50 percent of total voice trunk capacity is represented by SIP trunking, with the other half being the various other forms discussed earlier. What's more, most of SIP trunking connections are offered by native support on private branch exchange (PBX (News - Alert)) systems rather than through equipment like gateways or enterprise session border controllers (E-SBCs).

This is a market that's laden with opportunity for anyone who's in a position to try and get in. The market wants the material in question, is eager to bring it in, and has plenty of upselling opportunities as companies discover the kind of benefits that gateways and E-SBCs can represent when put to work. Aggressive marketing is called for here, as companies are interested and may not know all the options. But when companies are clearly interested and even defining what's desired—reliability, easier management and greater flexibility—it's a market that's rife with opportunity.