Today IT professionals and businesses in general understand the importance of unified communications (UC). Information speed is faster than ever – and continuously accelerating, so your information stream needs to be able to keep up. Whether it’s presence, voice, data, chat, video, messaging or email, everything needs to be synchronized. Using Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)as a part of your UC deployment is something that should be considered during the planning process – if you haven’t already jumped onto the SIP bandwagon.
SIP trunking isn’t new, but it has seen a considerable increase in adoption in recent years. Initially used as a form of business continuity or redundancy to traditional T1/PRI lines in the enterprise space, SIP trunking is now commonly viewed as a secure way to reduce costs. These cost savings, along with the productivity gains, are often considered as part of the business case for UC. Of course, traditional benefits such as improved customer service and satisfaction, along with reduced travel are often sited too.
The addition of SIP end point applications enable benefits like single number reach and extending enterprise communications to mobile employees. SIP provides a way to identify and set up various forms of communication sessions among endpoints capable of supporting a simple software client, over any kind of wired or wireless link. The value in SIP is that it enhances interoperability, provides alternatives, and promotes portability across telecommunications and applications. Combining mobility with presence and availability information accelerate collaboration and problem resolution. These are often key elements in the user-specific requirements in a UC deployment project.
As you consider your UC deployment, and define the goals of the project, take care not to overlook the flexibility of SIP applications and lower costs of SIP trunks. Not only do SIP trunks play a valuable role in building a justification based on cost savings and the business value of UC, they add to executive buy-in and user adoption, which is key in any successful project.
