SIP trunking has taken over as the buzzword of enterprise telephony. As Sheila McGee-Smith mentioned in her No Jitter post, when we asked Thomas Behnke of Kraft what benefits his company was getting from its implementation of Avaya Aura, he immediately responded that the savings from using SIP trunking among locations was the primary and initial benefit.
In a recent white paper on SIP trunking, Network Equipment Technologies (NET) points out that the key benefit of deploying SIP trunks in the enterprise is the ease of implementing Unified Communications, as a single IP connection can be used for voice, data, and video communication. SIP trunks allow organizations to consolidate telephony into datacenters, connect their existing voice infrastructure and extend communications to users outside the enterprise, and allow branch offices to be linked with datacenters for providing UC capabilities across the entire organization. Cost savings is another key reason companies are deploying SIP trunking - companies can save 50-70% per trunk when using SIP trunks compared to TDM circuits. In addition to the cost savings, SIP trunks allow organizations to better manage their bandwidth usage, and help reduce voice quality degradation. NET notes that its VX series also lets organizations more easily implement UC technologies such as Microsoft OCS R2.
Jay Brandstadter recently posted an article on UCStrategies.com about NET and SIP trunking for enterprises. Jay referenced a webinar that NET did with AT&T Consulting Services and fellow No Jitter blogger Melanie Turek, noting that AT&T Consulting Services has embraced NET's products and capabilities for its clients and chose NET as a key partner in its UC plan and rollout for a major global energy company. The deployment spans 180 countries and 150,000 employees, and leverages installed Microsoft OCS, Tandberg, Nortel, Polycom, and various other UC technologies and vendors. AT&T selected the NET VX series as the gateway/demarcation device for enterprise customers deploying UC and SIP trunking for several reasons: scalability, IP-PBX/PBX connectivity, integration with Microsoft's OCS-based solutions including (a) native RTAudio support, thus eliminating the need for Mediation Servers, (b) support of Active Directory call routing, and, (c) Calling Line ID handling.
As enterprises look to hard dollar savings to justify their UC investments, SIP trunking will continue to be a hot topic.