SIP trunking is not a new business solution or even a new technology; however, it continues to grow in popularity for enterprises and communication services providers (CSPs) looking to cut costs and increase ROI on their telecom investments.
SIP can feel like a nebulous topic, so let’s break it down. Short for Session Initiation Protocol, a SIP is a signaling protocol that enables end-to-end communication through different mediums: voice, video or messaging. A SIP trunk (and SIP trunking) is the enablement of phone services with an IP connection. Therefore, SIP is a foundational element to cloud-based telecom.
Flowroute is the first pure SIP trunking provider to receive certification as a competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) in the U.S. This enables Flowroute to provide enterprises, developers and other agile communication vendors such as Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) or Communication Platform as a Service (CPaaS) providers with direct access and control over their telecom resources.
In a time when all organizations are carefully evaluating their investments to determine which areas deliver the best returns, it is important to understand and highlight some of the growth opportunities and benefits SIP provides to enterprise communications.
Growth opportunities and drivers
According to Eastern Management Group’s SIP forecast, reported in No Jitter, the global SIP trunking market will reach $22 billion by 2024. This SIP report leveraged data secured from 40,000 IT manager surveys across 19 verticals. The report showcased many interesting findings; a few of which included that SIP trunking services account for almost 60 percent of all global network traffic and that SIP growth is fueled by communication vendors and the quality of service they provide.
Therefore, while not a new technology, the growth of SIP continues to thrive due to the innovative carriers and communication vendors that are able to offer affordable SIP services into new and competitive platforms (e.g. CPaaS or CCaaS), while also ensuring stellar quality service.
To show this in action, we can point to another Eastern Management Group report. The firm’s 2019 customer satisfaction study examined factors and data on more than 30 SIP trunking vendors. As you may have seen, the results highlighted Flowroute as a leader in overall satisfaction, securing four out of four stars in this category, also reported in No Jitter’s article.
Benefits
Beyond enabling end-to-end communication through high quality voice, video and messaging, SIP offers a handful of benefits that has made it an attractive solution for carriers, CSPs and ultimately enterprises.
For one, SIP trunking reduces telephony costs because SIP does not require investment in new hardware. Removing the cost associated with hardware also reduces the management and operational costs around overseeing dedicated staff to set it up.
Another benefit of SIP is its security features. The nature of VoIP built on SIP protocols gives enterprises control over their telephony resources. With this in mind, companies can customize their security settings by putting firewalls in place and tailoring inbound and outbound routing options to ensure network safety and avoid telecom fraudsters.
Given SIP runs on software and not hardware or landlines, it is flexible and can easily be scaled up or down based on the enterprises’ communication needs. It is this flexibility, compatibility and scalability that has made the transition to remote work smooth for the companies that run their corporate networks with SIP-powered communication and collaboration tools.
The growth of SIP will only continue to spike as collaboration and go-to-market solutions remain in high demand. Communication vendors that can embrace partnerships with other carriers and IT providers will help maintain the steady growth and successful deployments of SIP-powered communication services.
