SIP trunking is more than cost-cutting communications technology, it is a strategic business tool bearing significant organizational benefits, including enhanced productivity, improved unification/interop, and customizable fraud control. A poll conducted by Nemertes Research, concluded that CIOs and CTOs are implementing SIP trunking because they can centralize PSTN access, easily failover, and dynamically allocate channels to accommodate seasonal or campaign-based traffic fluctuations.
Productivity:
Your workforce is leaving the office. More than 25% of Americans spend at least some time working outside of the office each week. Frustrating issues like accessibility, quality and usage tracking are hot topics quickly coming to the forefront of discussions around communications management.
There are obvious benefits to providing people with the freedom to decide when and where they work. The challenge is facilitating the productivity that freedom allows without complicating your network and extending your spend on infrastructure. Unified Communications platforms and mobile technology are enabling this evolution fosteringgreater collaboration, but SIP trunking is the key to maintaining control and order.
All of your SIP carrier services can be managed centrally while empowering communications for employees wherever they go. Important UC functionality such as FindMe/Follow Me and seamlessly transferring calls from desk to mobile phones is made possible by SIP trunking. And because SIP trunking is carried over IP as data, it can carry mobile voice traffic without using cellular minutes. A softphone/client can route and receive calls over a WiFi or mobile data connection. So your mobile users can be accessible from anywhere. All of a sudden, voice transmission costs start to resemble something close to zero.
When you transition your organization to SIP trunking from legacy T1 or PRI connections, you gain control of your uptime. Redundancy and recovery are in your hands. If your primary provider goes down, the flick of a switch brings up your secondary instantly. And, provided you’re only paying for actual usage, that secondary provider doesn’t cost you a cent until you send calls. Failover routes automatically send incoming calls to another number or location in the event the designated endpoint is down due to power outage or loss of network connection. Your organization is saved the cost of diverting resources to reestablish your voice connection – more productivity gains.
Interop:
The fact that SIP is open and non-proprietary delivers greater interoperability between devices and platforms. SIP trunking can form the bridge between private networks and the PSTN, so there’s no longer a requirement for legacy infrastructure. And since SIP trunking doesn’t force you into a fixed gateway on location, you get more flexibility with how you route your connections and can actually reduce your communications infrastructure.
SIP trunking is easily activated, and purchasing phone numbers is as quick as the click of a mouse. This allows you to expand your business to new geographic locations while tying those new phone numbers back into your existing infrastructure. As you grow and technology evolves, you can expect SIP trunking will interconnect with new communications technologies you may want to integrate into your network.
It’s also a powerful enabler for opening up communication channels to your company for customers e.g. WebRTC-based click to call functionality. Imagine a customer clicking “support” or “sales” and being connected directly to your agent queue without picking up the phone to dial in and navigate convoluted IVR menus.
Security:
SIP trunking helps keep your communications channels out of the hands of thieves. Toll-fraud protections such as outbound rate restriction, and destination and IP whitelisting block most fraudulent calls. Of course, your best defense is securing your network [http://j.mp/1AACcp7].
Carriers such as Flowroute that separate signaling and audio make it nearly impossible to listen in to calls and trace them back to a specific caller and callee. Media and signaling are delivered and received over independant channels reassembled at each endpoint involved in a conversation, so anyone eavesdropping in on corporate secrets is out of luck. In this method of call delivery, audio bypasses carrier servers and switches where it could potentially be intercepted and recorded.
The strategic power of SIP trunking:
The health of your business depends on effective communications now and in the future. Your workforce and your business benefit from the capabilities of pure SIP carrier services enabling the full capabilities of your Unified Communications investments. Converting to pure-SIP communications, powered by a carrier that takes quality, reliability and security as seriously as you do, gives your business a more productive and effective workforce.
With SIP trunking, you will achieve a competitive technological advantage that secures savings and enables growth to secure your organization’s future. Move forward knowing that the investments you are making today will not become the legacy impediments your past (and maybe some of your current) telecommunications gear has become.
