Session Initiation Protocol (News - Alert) (SIP) trunking solutions are supposed to bring increased efficiency, functionality and cost savings in an organization. SIP trunking is identified as one of the most significant communications trends for 2011, according to a TMC (News - Alert) report.

According to Michael Oeth (News - Alert), CDO of Junction Networks, as told to TMC’s Rich Tehrani, anyone who continues to add SIP in a more integrated fashion to their mobile device is considered the mobile winners in 2011.

As mobile technology continues to infiltrate the corporate PBX (News - Alert) space, SIP trunking deployment becomes crucial for organizations. However, to get the best results out of SIP trunking, you must understand the existing Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and Unified Communications (UC) environment, says Sue Bradshaw, technology writer, Integrated Research (News - Alert).

Understanding the current call flows, trunk capacity, minimum, average and peak loads, and carrier costs, will help you understand SIP trunking requirements for your organization and facilitate a successful implementation.

“Eliminating the local loops means you’re placing 100 percent dependency on the WAN,” Bradshaw said. “If you’re prepared to take the risk then you must put 100 percent of your effort into making it work. The good news is that now you are a few years down the VoIP track, you are in a much better position to understand what to look for and how to find the answers.”

With several tools available to analyze and properly understand your VoIP environment, you are now able to get the information required to design and negotiate the best rates, contract and service level agreements with carriers and select the best blend of cost and telephony services, Bradshaw added.

Some of these tools help you compare utilization and capacity and make informed decisions about your SIP-enabled network design. You can also monitor and report on the call volumes of the branches that are frequently over-trunked. This will give you insight into call flows traversing in and out of the infrastructure and plan for any network upgrades or consolidation that may be necessary.

Bradshaw also underlines the need for preparing good detailed reports for the ITSP RFP process or for entering into new carrier negotiations. These reports, according to Bradshaw, help you plan for cost-effective growth. “Once you’ve moved to SIP trunking, real-time voice quality monitoring and reporting will provide insight to the availability and performance of the SIP trunk aggregation,” Bradshaw said.

Traditionally SIP trunking has been known to reduce calling costs. You can reduce it further by employing the techniques of least cost routing (LCR) and multiple ITSPs. However, prior to implementing the LCR, you must have the facilities that help you assess the types of calls going through your network, the locations of the calls, their duration and voice quality, the connected call types, the call failure and abandoned ratios.

Another important factor to be considered while implementing the SIP trunking is the gateway usage and amount you are paying to service users’ requirements. You can save on the costs of media gateways because in a SIP implementation gateways needed to connect to the PSTN will reside at the ITSP.

SIP is also known to provide options for multi-vendor integration. Keeping this in mind, enterprises must be prepared to manage the combined environment in an efficient manner. Bradshaw says while successful interoperability will reduce complexity for users, the system poses several challenges to administrators as it is truly global with many more moving parts to manage.

“The flexibility of monitoring any multi-vendor PBX directly as well as the SIP trunks enables you to monitor individual device availability, interface status, capacity and usage and see the impact of one device failure on another,” Bradshaw said.