September 01, 2009
Debunking the Myths: ITEXPO Workshop Tells All on Achieving Cost-Savings Opportunities with SIP Trunking
By Erin Harrison
Executive Editor, Cloud Computing
Industry experts debunked the myths surrounding SIP trunking during a tell-all session at ITEXPO on Tuesday at the Los Angeles Convention Center, which is being held Sept. 1 to 3. The session which offered technical insight covered the dynamics of session Internet protocol trunking, including issues such as the service provider’s SIP trunk connection, to IP-PBX (News - Alert) on the enterprise LAN, as well as setting up secure SIP trunks live and on-site.
The session was led by a panel of four industry leaders: Jerome Joanny from ShoreTel; Sean Rivers from Bandwidth.com; Steven Johnson (News - Alert) from Ingate; and Digium’s (News - Alert) Bill Miller. The SIP trunking “Everything You Need to Know” workshop is sponsored by InGate.
With most companies today tightening their budgets, companies can’t afford to put their communications services at risk. In fact, a recent survey of 1,400 chief information officers by Robert Half Technology (News - Alert) revealed that VoIP is the fourth most frequently cited area for IT investment in the next 12 months. Deploying SIP trunking solutions can help small businesses save up to 37 percent in a year, according to Rivers. Since the current economic recession, he said Bandwidth.com has seen an uptick in enterprises looking to converge and centralize, and ultimately achieve significant cost savings, most of which have achieved ROI within 12 months. Among the benefits of a centralized platform are reduced travel and maintenance and reduced CAPEX.
Cost savings through SIP trunking also opens up options such as video deployment and network upgrades and time savings can allow for new projects, hardware refreshes and optimization, Rivers added. Bandwith.com was founded in 1999 was named Inc’s number one fastest growing telecom in the U.S. for the past three years. The company handled 332 million minutes over their network last month, Rivers said.
ShoreTel’s Jerome Joanny, told the audience: “There is a lot of misunderstanding about what SIP trunking really is, or is not.”
Among the advantages of SIP trunking are: lower recurring costs from the carrier, flexible calling plans with bundled minutes and no long distance charges; more feature offerings, such as virtual numbers; deployment flexibility with self-serve portals and quicker increments; and dual use of data pipe, voice and data.
Ultimately, SIP trunking can “ensure customers can keep total ownership of network security when SIP is introduced,” Joanny added.
The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company serves nearly 11,000 customers and has approximately $135 million in annual revenue.
According to InGate’s Steven Johnson, the Sweden-based company focuses on the development of SIP enabling security technology, such as SIP to VoIP and UC, or global IP connection and offers an enterprise session border controller, the Ingate SIParator. The Ingate SIParator connects to existing firewalls, enabling the transmission of SIP-based communications while preserving a company’s previous investment in firewall security.
“Companies can attain some phenomenal reduction in costs and achieve ROI in less than nine months,” Johnson told the attentive crowd. “It’s a very good financial decision that can really go right to your bottom line. In today’s economy we are all interested in seeing those things go forward.”
SIP trunking is the fastest growing service in VoIP and is expected to have an 89 percent compound average growth rate from 2008 to 2013, according to Infonetics Research (News - Alert).
To date, SIP trunking had largely focused on recreating current TDM voice services – or trunks – over IP. While helpful, that’s only one possible use, with the true market potential in its ability to act as a hosted services conduit.
Follow ITEXPO on Twitter: twitter.com/itexpo
Erin Harrison is a Senior Editor with TMC. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by Michael Dinan
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