Recently, Network Equipment Technologies (NET) hosted a most informative webinar on the title subject. Speakers were Melanie Turek of Frost & Sullivan who addressed the background and strategic implications of SIP trunking, Dave Stewart and Dave Hart of AT&T Consulting Services on real-world SIP trunking case studies, best practices and lessons learned from these experiences, and Talbot Harty, NET’s Chief Development Officer, on the value of using the VX series in deploying SIP trunking for enterprises. This highly recommended webinar is available on NET’s web site; also view the white paper on the benefits of a demarcation device in SIP trunking. 

There is no doubt that today’s communications environment is complex and full of challenges such as when and how to migrate to Unified Communications (UC) and how to leverage the cost savings and other benefits of SIP trunking. Complexities like that demand solid and complete engineering solutions. I first became aware of NET’s expertise in addressing tough telecommunications problems like protocol conversion and bandwidth efficiency about 15 years ago based on the company’s innovations for Defense Department networks. From my perspective, that engineering expertise and tradition continues to this day as evidenced, for example, in NET’s products and approaches to UC and SIP trunking.

There are numerous important takeaways from the SIP trunking webinar. Key among these is the way that AT&T Consulting Services, perhaps the leading UC integrator, has embraced NET’s products and capabilities for its clients. For example, AT&T Consulting chose NET as a key partner in its UC plan and rollout for a major global energy company. This is not a limited one-off situation but rather deployment of UC for a huge multinational corporation spanning 180 countries, 150K employees and a proposed solution that leverages installed Microsoft OCS, Tandberg, Nortel, Polycom, and various other UC technologies and vendors.

Moreover, AT&T Consulting sees the NET VX series as the gateway/demarcation device of choice for enterprise customers of all sizes in their migration plans and deployment strategies for UC and SIP trunking. AT&T Consulting’s rationale for specifying the NET VX as key component in these solutions includes:

• Scalability
• “Any-to-Any” connectivity with most (IP)PBX vendors and protocols
• High-level integration with Microsoft’s OCS-based solutions such as native RTAudio support eliminating the need for mediation servers, Active Directory call routing, and Calling Line ID handling

This last item underscores the significant value of utilizing the NET VX when the Microsoft OCS is a current or targeted element in an enterprise’s UC scenario that uses or can benefit from SIP trunking. Note that this is not a potential, unproven “future” capability; the VX is handling SIP trunking in OCS and mixed platform (OCS + IP-PBX) environments today for real customers in operational deployments. The VX credibility and implementations exist for other enterprises to learn from and follow as they consider SIP trunking for their specific environments.

NET products do indeed solve very complex problems and NET would do well to make those solutions easier to understand in non-technical terms for key decision-makers and others who are not engineers. Additionally, more attention should be given in NET collateral to target UC environments that do not include Microsoft OCS.

Once again, visit NET’s site and spend some time reviewing the SIP trunking webinar; you will definitely learn many valuable things that will help on your road to UC.