Top Stories of 2009: SIP trunking and Unified Communications gain momentum

In 2009 it was hard to look through VoIP news and not bump into another announcement about a SIP or Unified Communications (UC) deal. Both items have gained momentum and are becoming the rule in the VoIP world. According to Infonetics [1], SIP trunking service revenue is expected to have an 89 percent compound annual growth rate from 2008 to 2013! In the same report they predict that hosted UC services would "take off," with worldwide revenue doubling over the next four years. Sounds like smart money is on these two areas of IP communications.

A key indicator of UC's coming dominance was Cisco announcement of a major push to corner the collaboration market with new products, reseller options and licensing packages for its unified communications solutions. Cisco pegged the value of the UC market at a whopping $34 billion [2]! A study in October carried out about Frost & Sullivan--commissioned by Cisco and Verizon--found that collaboration tools like [3]VoIP [3], instant messaging, and high-definition video meetings resulted in cost savings averaging four times the return on investment for firms using the IP platforms. Frost and Sullivan surveyed 3,662 decision makers in small- and medium-sized business as well as enterprises in various parts of the world, and found that 44 percent had deployed some form of unified communications already. According to an ABI Research report on Unified Communications, uptake is on a 'steeply rising curve.' ABI's report predicted [4] that spending on UC would rise from the lowly sum of $302 million in 2008 to $4.2 billion by 2013. Just recently, Adtran also threw its hat into UC arena. [5]

SIP was also a constant source of potential for the industry with a number of companies launching SIP solutions. Acme Packet and BroadSoft [6] teamed for a SIP trunking offering. They claimed that a SIP trunking offering can raise a company's average revenue per customer and reduce churn by providing value-added services to connectivity offers. Ingate and Dialogic [7] launched a SIP offering as well. Then JAJAH, Microsoft inked a SIP deal [8]. Skype for SIP [9] became a major part of Skype's plan to offer businesses its services. Even Sprint got into the action when it made its SIP trunking generally available to OCS clients. [10] The technology seems to follow the line of upgrades that will help companies save money in these hard economic times.

An Infonetics report in October continued to show that SIP was indeed catching on [11] finding that many companies have deployed VoIP within their organizations, but they are still using legacy TDM to connect to the PSTN. The report stated that as technology upgrades start up again, SIP trunking will come to replace the legacy TDM technology. By 2010 SIP trunking will be the second most commonly deployed trunking type.