SIP Trunking is just the start of the Hyper-Connected Enterprise. SIP Trunking can immediately save you between 20% and 80% of your telecom costs as an initial ROI.
But beyond that, it provides an avenue to the exciting productivity kickers of a UC/real-time Service Orientated Architecture [SOA] across your enterprise and across federated enterprises.
SIP Trunks Reduce Costs in Many Ways
SIP Trunking allows you to buy only the Voice capacity you need from your telco and obviates the need for dedicated hardware for ISDN BRIs and PRIs and rigid data+voice tied to one carrier. This is a significant cost saving to start with because the enterprise no longer pays for un-utilized capacity, buys in small increments for business growth–only when needed. You can even temporarily provision increased capacity for seasonal peaks.
Use the Bandwidth You Have
Owing to the bursty nature of data traffic, most enterprises have more bandwidth capacity than they need for web traffic. This excess can be used to support voice traffic, in many cases allowing the enterprise to adopt SIP trunking without adding access bandwidth costs – use what you have! Quality of voice transmission is preserved using QoS applied by the SBC.
The use of End-to-End IP makes it possible to cost-efficiently use SIP trunks from multiple service providers, depending on geographic availability and the best rates. By routing calls to the cheapest service provider, according to least-cost routing, based on country codes, area codes, time-of-day, significant savings can be achieved.
Best value routing achieves the ideal compromise between good quality for mission critical traffic and cost efficiencies.
All this can be easily achieved using the best carrier-class Session Border Controller [SBC].
Collaboration and Federation
Voice over IP is much more than cost savings on telecommunications. It is efficient collaboration with colleagues and customers. SIP allows you to integrate with computing applications to work together with people remotely in a rich and rewarding interaction.
Remote web based collaboration also makes for more efficient objective-focused meetings saving time and increasing productivity for all of us.
Federation allows controlled and secure collaboration between two different enterprises with no formal interconnect agreement.
Such Universal Communication/real-time SOA include the following services:
- Presence, to see who is currently online and available.
- Instant Messaging (IM), text messaging in real-time.
- File transfer.
- Application sharing, collaboration on a single document.
- Whiteboarding, writing and drawing on a common virtual whiteboard.
- Video conferencing.
- Machine-to-machine real-time communication bringing in measurements and Big Data to the discussion.
- The distribution of alarms.
Interoperability
SIP is an evolving protocol. It is been around for about a decade and a half but is comprised of the number of RFC’s. Interoperability issues still exist where two vendors interpret the RFC differently. However, the Session Border Controller [SBC] removes this concern with real-time Header Manipulation Rules [HMR] to present the SIP message to the Receiving equipment as it is expecting or required.
For example, SIP trunks have different characteristics which affect Interworking with access devices and endpoints and a carrier-class SBC is required across signaling and transport protocols to Normalize protocols.
Secure Your SIP Network
Just because you would never think about connecting your enterprise network to the outside world without protection of a firewall, so you should also protect your enterprise with a VoIP specific firewall. Such a device is a Session Border Controller [SBC]. Current firewalls do not possess the VoIP sophistication to protect your enterprise network.
The Acme Packet [now Oracle] Session Border Controller [SBC] achieved “best in class” status within the service provider community. Acme Packet never offered a VoIP/softswitch. So their SBC had to prove itself on its own merits in terms of the best Functionality, scalability and performance under attack, without the pull of a partner switch installation.
For example:
- Acme Packet /Oracle SBC will continue to deliver service at the required capacity while dealing with a Distributed Denial of Service [DDoS] attack.
Firewall and NAT Issues
IP address ranges are different within an enterprise LAN versus the outside world. Simple NAT function will not allow UDP end-to-end communication across the two and a SIP savvy device must be employed to manage this communication. From a security standpoint, an enterprise may not wish such SIP URI’s to be presented to the outside world. A Session Border Controller takes care of all this.
Reliability and Failsafe Communications
Owing to the packet nature of IP, it is sometimes perceived that such communication is unreliable. Certainly there are continuous quality issues which should be managed by a platform such as Oracle Palladion Communications Operations Monitor [OCOM].
However, the most reliable communications network on the planet is the Internet derived from its massive redundancy.
When the state of your call is held between multiple devices such as an Acme Packet/Oracle SBC in High Availability [HA] configuration, your communications actually becomes more reliable than ISDN PRI/BRI.
An Acme Packet/Oracle SBC in High Availability [HA] Configuration will Maintain a call state i.e. keep your call up and active even when the SIP trunk or Link or any other part of your network goes down.
Privacy – Easy Encryption
Communication can be made private in a digital environment through encryption. This is he using TLS and TP/Oracle SBC, ensuring scalable and secure communication between two peer entities.