Many technology markets associated with VoIP and UC have been on the bubble for many years. Technologies such as VoIP firewalls and service delivery platforms have floundered for a while but never really crossed that line where we consider them a core part of the UC ecosystem. One of the markets that I've watched for a while that I feel may actually emerge from the noise is the technology known as "session border controllers" (SBCs).The definition of a SBC is a device that sits at the edge of a VoIP network and exerts control over the media streams and signaling used to set up, tear down and control voice and other multimedia communications. The term "session" is any communication service and can be a multitude of protocols such as SIP, H.323, MGCP and others. The term "border" has historically been thought of as the peering point between service providers but can also be the connection point between enterprises, connection points within and enterprise or an enterprise and service provider. Lastly, "control" can refer to a number of things including security, compliance management, cost and revenue assurance and other things.
The reason that SBCs have not been a mainstream enterprise technology is that most enterprises deploy VoIP over the private network but did not extend it past the boundaries of the corporate network. However, today with the growth of SIP trunking, hosted and cloud based services, enterprises have the created the opportunity to expand the use of VoIP past these traditional demarcation points. The four points in the network where a corporation would want to deploy a SBC are:
* Connection point between an enterprise and SIP trunking provider. This would allow the enterprise to push the "edge" of the VoIP network into the SIP trunking provider's "cloud."
* Connection point between an enterprise and hosted services provider. This could be used to allow an enterprise to use a hosted provider for UC services such as contact center, conferencing, voice or other UC applications.
* Connection point between an enterprise and another organization. This could allow companies to interconnect their own VoIP islands if the companies made up of discrete divisions or to create direct VoIP calling between organizations. The alternative to this is for each organization to convert from VoIP to PSTN back to VoIP.
* Internet border. This will allow enterprises to securely extend VoIP deployments past the traditional "enterprise edge" and out to different remote sites and mobile workers.
Of all the scenarios listed above, I think the biggest area of "low hanging fruit" for this market is in helping enterprises connect to SIP trunking providers. I've done some analysis on this in the past and there are significant cost savings for most companies as the number of trunk lines a company has can be consolidated (more info see this Yankee Group report). The research I did also highlighted how only a small percentage of the enterprise buyers actually knew what SIP trunking was and how it worked. They knew the term SIP but that's as far as the understanding went for most buyers.
There are many reasons for the low awareness and knowledge but the main one is that the network operators themselves have been very passive about pushing SIP trunks since it threatens to cannibalize the traditional trunking business. This has changed over the past year though. In the past 12 months I've seen the likes of AT&T, Verizon Business and Sprint push the value of SIP trunking onto its customers more, which should stimulate adoption of it.
During the interview process the individuals that I talked with did say there were some technical hurdles to overcome when deploying SIP trunks, but most of them were related to the fact that most firewalls and other traditional security cannot handle the bidirectional nature of voice and other communications--most of which can be overcome through the use of a session border controller.
There are other benefits that a SBC can provide, such as enabling a virtual contact centers and disaster recovery sites as well as assisting with compliance and regulatory requirements, which might be key in some verticals. However, for most general enterprises, it's my opinion that the cost savings benefits from re-architecting the network to leverage SIP trunking effectively will outweigh the other benefits and could actually help fund the rest of the UC deployment and ultimately accelerate deployments.
So, while the market for sessions border controllers has historically been thought of as telco-only market, I do expect better enterprise penetration, meaning companies like Acme Packet and NexTone could be acquisition candidates over the next couple of years.
