enterprise voip trends & insights for 2012 and beyond

FierceTelecom Custom Publishing

• SIP is Part of the Overall IP Suite

AspartoftheIPsuite,SIPisflexibleandextraordinarilydynamic.Itsfunctionalitycanbeextendedtonumerousapplications,includingenhancedsignalingforvalue-addedservices,VoIP,andXML-taggedapplications.BecauseXMLisusedtostructure,store,andsendinformationacrossthenetwork,itworkswellwithSIPinenvironmentswheredataneedstoberetrievedandused,asinacallcenterenvironmentwherecustomerrecordsmustbeaccessed,orinahealthcareenvironmentwhereaccesstocustomer

dataiscritical.SIPreliesonatext-basedcommandstructurethatusesHTTPsyntaxandURLaddressing,bothidealfordeliveringtelephonyoveranIPnetworkwherethelogicalintegrationofapplications(e.g.,voice,messaging,conferencing,andWebaccess)cancreateanenhancedcustomerexperience.

• Supports Any Network Transport MediumBecauseSIPisanapplicationlayerprotocol,itcanrideseamlesslyacrossanytransportschemeandbetransportedacrossanyaccessmodality—cable,DSL,privateline,Ethernet,andwireless.Thus,SIPcanenableabroadrangeof

applicationsandremotesessioncapabilities(suchasmobileapplicationdeliveryandsupplychainmanagement)withouttheneedtoprovisionadditionaltransportservices.Fromanenterprisepoint-of-view,thisiscriticalbecauseSIPoffersseamlessconnectivityoptionsforbranchlocations,remoteworkersandtradingpartners.

• Mobility and Presence SupportSIPisincorporatedintoarangeofuserdevices,includingmobilewirelessdevicesanddesktopclients.UsingSIP,sessionestablishmentrequestsarenotsenttoadevice;theyaresenttothenetwork,whichlocatestheuser’s“presence”andestablishesasessionbasedontheuser’scurrentlocationandusageprofile.BecauseSIPunshacklesusers’physicallocationfromtheirlogicaladdress,theycanhavefullyintegratedcorporatecommunications—regardlessoflocation.Theycanalsointegrateinstantmessaginganddesktopcollaborationapplications.Userscancustomizetheiravailabilityprofileandpublishitfortheworldtosee,thusmakingcommunicationsmuchmoreefficient.Inshort,SIPistheprotocolthatsupportstheuniversalavailabilityofpresenceinformation.SIP is a fundamentally important

technology in the evolving con-verged network and will play an increasingly important role in enter-prise and SMB networks. l

SIP Advantages and ApplicationsWhendeployedinanetwork,SIPoffersdistinctadvantagesthatcanbeusedtodeveloppowerfulandcompellingend-userapplications.Forexample:• Intelligence at the Edge

SIP-enabledtelephonysystemsoffermostofthecallprocessingandfeatureinvocationproceduresofferedthroughtraditionalvoicenetworks—butinadifferentway.Traditionalvoicenetworksuseahierarchical,centralized,core-based

protocoldesignedaroundthelimitedrequirementsoftelephonesets—whichhavenoinnateintelligence.SIP,ontheotherhand,isapeer-to-peerprotocol,whichrequiresadifferenttypeofnetworkcoreinfrastructure(preferablyMPLSbuiltonanIPplatform)withablendofintelligencelocatedattheedge(i.e.,softwareorend-userdevicehardwareorPBX),complementedbymorescalable,granular,andrapidlydeployedservicesofferedbynetworkoperators.

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Enterprise VoIP Trends & Insights for 2012 and Beyond

BrOughT TO yOu By:

Why SIP Makes Sense: Advantages and Applications SIP is an application layer protocol that is used to establish, maintain, modify, and end communications sessions between two or more parties. The driving force behind the development of SIP was the need for a signaling protocol for IP-based networks that can support the standard call processing functions found in the PSTN.

3VoIP’s New

Resiliency: How SIP Trunking

Can Help Improve Capacity

Management

6SIP Trunking

and the Ever-changing

SBC

9The Great

Enabler: SIP Trunking

Underpins Unified Communications

and Mobility

12Saving Your

Voice: Security a Key Component in VoIP Buying

Decision

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SIPtrunkingservicesoffercorporateenterprisesmorecost-effectivewaysofcarryingvoicecallsandmanagingtheexpansionofVoIPtoalloftheirlocations,butthesebottom-lineimprove-mentswouldbeimpossiblewithoutfeaturesthatchangehowvoicecapacitycanbemanagedandsharedacrosstheenterprise.

Unlike legacy voice services and even other enterprise VoIP mod-els, SIP trunking frees voice from the capacity limits of individual lines, and makes it a common resource that can be allocated on a flexible basis.

“What SIP trunking really does is change how you look at the net-

work,” said Nena Dodson, national enterprise services engineer at XO Communications. “You can look at the network more holistically, and at bandwidth as a centralized resource, rather than a decen-tralized one. You can buy voice capacity in the form of one big pipe rather than individual circuits. You can size your investment on the size of your network rather than by

each individual location where you want VoIP.”

Once an enterprise can do that, it can start working on how to better manage capacity on a per session basis. Steve Carter, senior man-ager of product management at XO Communications, said, “To keep costs low, what customers really want to do is manage their session costs, but the first thing they need to understand is that not all ses-sions are created equal.”

Understanding how to best man-age voice capacity is not all that simple in the current market, Carter said. For example, if a business customer needs support for 1,000 simultaneous call sessions through

one data center, they may also find themselves paying for back-up sessions at a second data cen-ter—even if the second allotment of sessions is not used.

“You shouldn’t be charged you for sessions that you don’t need,” Carter said. “You shouldn’t be forced to double up.”

With bandwidth becoming a centralized resource through a SIP

trunking service, enterprises can make the most of their new-found voice capacity, said Elka Popova, director of unified communications and collaboration at Frost & Sul-livan. “Through dynamic bandwidth allocation and a larger compres-sion, a SIP trunk can carry a large number of simultaneous calls—any-where between 28 and 41 per SIP trunk depending on call volume and call patterns,” she said. “In compari-

VoIP’s New Resiliency: How SIP Trunking Can Help Improve Capacity Management

son, a traditional PSTN/PRI trunk can accommodate only 24 calls per channel, which in actual implemen-tation scenarios is typically reduced to about 17.5 calls. Dynamic capac-ity management allows businesses to add or reduce the simultaneous call paths on the trunk based on actual demand without paying for the additional capacity.” That logic also should apply to business cus-tomers that see their usage trends

affected by unplanned or even planned spikes, said XO’s Carter. An important aspect that should be considered when choosing a SIP trunking service is how well that service handles bursting traffic.

Daily peak hours and seasonal usage trends are two things that create bursting traffic. For example, a company with office branches in four different time zones may see rolling peak calling hours throughout

the day. One office may see a traf-fic spike while another office’s call volume remains relatively low.

In many cases, business customers see their ports over-provisioned by the carrier to handle potential spikes, but they end up paying whether or not the extra circuits are used.

“It would be more logical to extend the capacity where and

Dynamic capacity management features lend a new sort of resiliency to VoIP in the business enterprise, a quality that may surprise some users who thought of it as nothing more than a bargain.

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Sessionbordercontrollers(SBCs)areimportantcomponentsinSIPtrunkingservicedeploy-mentsbecausetheyprovidegatewaysbetweenthevariousserviceproviderandenterprisenetworksthatSIPtrunkingcallsessionsmusttraverse.ThatmakesthemcriticaltothesecurityofSIPtrunkingconnections.How-ever,SBCsactuallypredateSIPtrunkingservices,andtheyplayavarietyofrolesinallkindsofIPservicedeployments.

“They are traffic cops, but that is not all they do,” said Ramani Pandurangan, director of voice architecture and technology at XO Communications. “They do legacy protocol mapping to SIP and do a lot of signal internetworking functions.”

In addition, SBCs can assist in

overall capacity management. For example, they can ensure out-bound calls are transmitted even at times when in-bound call volumes are very heavy, Pandurangan said. “The SBC can be used for header manipulation to adapt to different Carriers,” he said. “They can also be used to do traffic policing—set-ting policies for routing data—and can collect traffic data to be used in reports.”

SBCs started in carrier networks, deployed at the border between network peering partners to sup-port internetworking. They handled transcoding between TDM net-works and evolving islands of IP coverage and, like VoIP gateways, could also translate between IP networks using different protocols—SIP or H.323, for example.

However, Elka Popova, direc-tor of unified communications and collaboration at Frost & Sullivan, said SIP’s maturation into a more ubiquitous protocol has lessened the need for protocol transcoding and VoIP gateways designed for that purpose, which has given rise to more full-featured SBCs. “As SIP

SIP Trunking and the Ever-changing SBC

SBCs also are used within enterprise networks to handle increasing network complexity created by corporate mergers that bring together once-disparate corporate networks.

when the business users need it,” said Robert Mason, research director of network services at Gartner. “Not a lot of service pro-viders do that.”

Carter said XO does. “You need to provision a port that meets your capacity requirements. However, if you need just part of the port, we’ll only charge you for the por-tion you use.” Infonetics’ Myers

added, “If you have many sites with heavier call volumes, you can centralize control for more efficient use of your trunk capacity. You can allocate capacity where you need it most.”

Popova added, “Bursting pro-vides superior benefits, especially to larger, multi-site businesses. In most cases, businesses over-pro-vision bandwidth to limit downtime and quality issues with real-time

traffic. Typically, connectivity is handled separately for each site, so the more sites, the larger the excess bandwidth. If businesses can “borrow” available bandwidth from one site to use it for other sites, they can save a lot of money by avoiding the over-provisioning.”

XO is among the few SIP trunking providers that have begun to offer a bursting capability, according to Popova. XO distinguishes its own

burstable capability by offering redundancy at all customer locations, and by being able to route traffic across sites, and from other carrier networks. Popova also pointed out that the ability to flexibly adjust capacity also extends to business continuity and disaster recovery

situations. She cited the service’s “inherent business continuity capa-bility to provide automatic failover from one Enterprise SIP connec-tion to another, ensuring redundant paths to the PSTN in the event that one of the primary SIP connections is unavailable.”

Gartner’s Mason added, “Having that flexibility to deal with a sudden event like an outage is a very valid benefit. Otherwise, it would take too much time to get capacity back up at the affected site.” Dynamic capacity management features lend a new sort of resiliency to VoIP in the business enterprise, a quality that may surprise some users who thought of it as nothing more than a bargain. SIP trunking is cost-efficient, but it’s also capac-ity-efficient. l

Daily peak hours and seasonal usage trends are two things that create bursting traffic. For example, a company with office branches in four different time zones may see rolling peak calling hours throughout the day. One office may see a traffic spike while another office’s call volume remains relatively low.

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becomes increasingly standardized and mainstream, both in enterprise and carrier networks, it becomes less important to use VoIP gate-ways [as protocol conversion is less required], and SBCs are becom-ing one of the most critical border elements,” she said. “They enable protocol normalization and handle security at the demarc point where the carrier and the enterprise net-work come together.

SBCs also are used within enterprise networks to handle increasing network complexity created by new services like uni-fied communications and mobility, as well as by corporate mergers that bring together once-disparate corporate networks.

Nena Dodson, national enterprise

services engineer at XO, said, “An SBC allows customers to bring all of the traffic from all of their separate networks, hub them all together, wrap them up with a big bow on them, and present them to the carrier as one. If an enterprise can do that, it won’t have all of these separate trunk groups going over to the carrier network.”

Dodson said such situations have occurred frequently in industries such as banking, where banks often merge with one another, and then use SBCs to help them integrate and combine enterprise networks that use equipment from different vendors. “SBCs help them unify that landscape,” she said.

As SBCs have evolved, they also have grown from being an IP data service component to an IP

voice service component. How-ever, SBCs that have traditionally been deployed to support data sessions may not be the most appropriate for supporting voice services, said Steve Carter, senior manager for product manage-ment at XO Communications.

“Today’s data focused solutions are not enough,” he said. “They lack ability to dynamically correct VoIP

connectivity issues. They are unable to perform VoIP signaling and media deep packet inspection. They have an inability to track session state and provide uninterrupted service. Also, firewalls and routers in data SBCs can’t protect unified com-munications resources.”

As others noted, SBCs can do a great many things, but securing networks is probably the most critical role they play. To Carter’s point, SBCs that are deployed to support SIP trunking voice services are often deployed with security in mind as a main function. “Security is paramount,” Carter said. “The multi-protocol and real-time nature of VoIP demands a sophisticated stateful defense strategy. Signaling attacks are among the simplest to launch. SBCs help protect the network and other devices from malicious attacks of different types, such as a denial-of-service attack, toll fraud or topology hiding.”

SBCs also can provide encryp-tion of signaling via the Transport Layer Security (TLS) and IPSec, and media via Secure Real-Time Trans-fer Protocol (SRTP), Carter said.

As SBCs have matured, the market dynamics around their availability also have changed. Increasingly, SBCs are available not only directly from SBC vendors, but also from SIP trunking service pro-viders, either included in the price of the SIP trunking service, or as a separate item. “We see both situa-

tions,” said Deborah Kish, principal analyst, communications service provider technology at Gartner. “We see carriers buying vendor solutions and reselling to enterprise, and in some cases, hosted SBC services.”

XO partners with SBC ven-dors ACME Packets and Sonus Networks to deploy SBCs as a managed network element at the customer premise as part of XO’s Enterprise SIP Service. “A man-aged SBC offering is something you will more often see a TDM customer who is moving to IP have an inter-est in,” said XO’s Dodson. “A lot of customers will just want help setting up and configuring the SBC, but some may want the service provider to manage it on an ongoing basis.”

There are many SBC vendors, and while service providers will want to be able to work with an enter-prise’s preferred vendor—if there is one—they may not work with every SBC on the market.

Diane Myers, directing ana-lyst, VoIP and IMS, at Infonetics Research, said, “If you’re a service

provider working with an SBC vendor, you have to do interoperability testing. You want to give the customer options for which SBC they want to have, but not too many, or it just becomes too confusing. If the customer wants you to work with an SBC they already have, then you have to make it work.”

Carter added, “Carri-ers should be able to talk about their deployments with SBCs, but saying they are certified on a specific SBC doesn’t really address the need. Number of ses-

sions, availability requirements, security and reporting drive what a customer would order. XO recom-mends testing based on customer application.”

SBCs will continue to evolve as IP services continue to evolve. It’s possible that some of the functions they support today could become integrated into other equipment. “More SBC functions are being built into PBXs now,” said Infonet-ics’ Myers. “That could become another way of getting the SBC functionality into businesses.”

XO’s Pandurangan said examples of how that is happening include manufacturers of PBXs that are incorporating “SBC functions” to support functions such as security and protocol mapping. “It’s a way of reducing the number of boxes needed to support the enterprise’s networking needs,” he said.

However border network ele-ments do evolve in the future, one thing is certain: SBC functions go hand in hand with SIP trunking. l

There are many SBC vendors, and while service providers will want to be able to work with an enterprise’s preferred vendor—if there is one—they may not work with every SBC on the market.



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Another way is that the UC platform can act like the PBX and directly connect to the SIP trunk, and a third model could have a session border controller mediating between the UC platform and the SIP trunk.”

Once in place, SIP trunking can allow business customers to reduce costs, in part by allowing them to potentially eliminate other border control elements, said Elka Popova, director of unified communications and collaboration at Frost & Sullivan.

“SIP trunking allows such busi-nesses to significantly reduce the total cost of ownership of their com-munications infrastructure,” she said. “Many UC services such as mes-saging, mobility, application sharing, and conferencing can be more

efficiently deployed over SIP. By using SIP trunking services, organi-zations with SIP-enabled IP PBXs or UC solutions can eliminate the cost of VoIP gateways and other border control elements needed to connect their next-generation communica-tions systems with the PSTN.”

Popova also said that SIP trunk-

ing allows application management to be centralized, which in turn allows for greater IT operational efficiencies. “In an advanced UC environment with SIP trunking, users can access applications based on their roles and actual needs, rather than their location, platform, or device,” she said

Also, Carter said a SIP trunking service supporting a unified com-munications deployment should allow data to share the enterprise SIP access, or at least provide separate access. “Many SIP trunk-ing providers still charge additional fees for data and Internet,” he said.

Service redundancy and failover capabilities also are important in any kind of enterprise VoIP deploy-

ment, but especially in unified communications environments, where disruptions in service means a disruption of the enterprise’s collaboration environment. Carter said XO enables fail-over from one XO Enterprise SIP connection to another so that customers do not lose their collaboration capabilities.

Whatever SIP trunk-ing service a business enterprise chooses must also work with other unified communications components the busi-ness is deploying, such as PBXs. There are dozens of different PBXs on the market. For a SIP

Twoofthehottesttechnologytrendsinthebusinessenterprisesectorareunifiedcommunica-tionsandworkforcemobilization.Dependingonanindividualbusi-ness’uniqueneeds,itmaybedoingmoreofonethantheother,butformanycompanies,adoptionofunifiedcommunicationsandmobilitycapabilitieswillgohandinhand.

An underlying enabler of these two service sets that does not get nearly as much attention is SIP trunking, and as businesses invest in unified communications and mobility technologies, they should consider how SIP trunking services can help them get the most out of both evolutions.

Steve Carter, senior manager for product management at XO Com-munications, explained where SIP

trunking fits in the scenario of a uni-fied communications deployment: “SIP trunking allows businesses to deploy unified communications across an entire network by lever-aging the customer’s wide area network, and by providing access to unified communications capabilities to all of their branch office locations.”

In that sense, SIP trunking is the technology that helps unified com-munications expand beyond the main corporate campus.

One of the main benefits of using SIP trunking to support such an expansion is cost savings. Without it, business customers would have to spend money on new hardware and software at every branch location where they wanted to extend the unified com-munications capabilities.

“SIP trunking reduces total cost of

ownership for unified communica-tions, with less equipment to buy and manage at every location,” Cart-er said. He added that one of the first factors that business enterprises will have to consider when evaluat-ing how, where and when to pursue a unified communications strategy is exactly how much it will cost them to set up the new capabilities at all of their wide area network sites. If the hardware costs are too high, they will end up with a limited unified communications deployment, and limited benefits.

“SIP trunking is really how unified communcations capabilities get out to the PSTN,” said Nena Dodson, national enterprise services engineer at XO Communications. “And you make the most of that benefit by having a direct link between the SIP trunk and the unified communica-tions platform.”

The platform that XO has most frequently seen requests to link to is Microsoft Lync. “That platform has a capability that allows the Lync server to automatically con-figure it based on preset rules that were defined by the provider and Microsoft during the certification process,” Dodson said. “For other unified communications platforms, we put out a guide on how you to configure the connection.”

Ramani Pandurangan, director of voice architecture and technol-ogy at XO Communications, added, “There are different ways to create these connections. You might have a connection between the UC plat-form and the IP PBX, and the PBX connects to the SIP trunk service.

Whatever SIP trunking service a business enterprise chooses must also work with other unified communications components the business is deploying, such as PBXs.

The Great Enabler: SIP Trunking Underpins Unified Communications and Mobility

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Atfirstglance,aVoIPlinemayseemanunlikelytargetforsecu-ritythreats.VoiceservicesdonotreceivenearlythesameamountofhackerattentionasdataandInternettraffic,andunliketheglobalpublicitygarneredbynotori-ousInternetwormsandvirusestheindustryhasseenveryfew,ifany,headlinesaboutmajorVoIPattacks.

However, that does not necessarily mean they have not happened—or could not happen. That is some-thing that customers of SIP trunking services should consider when mak-ing their buying decisions, and that providers of these services should be ready to address.

“It’s true that we are not hearing much right now about businesses being attacked, but it is also possible we’re not hearing about breaches because businesses don’t want to tell the world that their systems have been compromised” said Diane Myers, directing analyst, VoIP and IMS, at Infonetics Research.

Traditionally, VoIP services have been viewed as somewhat more susceptible to security threats than TDM voices services because on TDM, voice traffic was isolated from data traffic. On the IP network, voice

becomes in effect another data service.

It may come as a surprise then that the biggest security threat for customers of a service like SIP trunk-ing is not a massive, coordinated attack by a global botnet army, but instead something decidedly more old-school.

“There is not a particular amount of effort being taken [by hackers] to compromise SIP right now, but what you do see is toll fraud,” said Robert

Mason, research director of network services for Gartner.

Infonetics’ Myers recalled that one SIP trunking security breach she had heard about involved a hacker tap-ping into a business’ IP connection and directing thousands of rogue calls through their phone system. “Toll fraud may not sound like a huge problem, but if you see it happen on that scale, it can be a huge financial loss,” she said.

Steve Carter, senior manager of product management at XO Com-munications, explained that IP gear like PBXs and gateways can be hacked to gain access to voice capacity. “When you access a PBX remotely, it may not recognize a legit call versus one that’s not legit,” he said. A fraud occurrence involving an IP voice service actually could have the potential to be even more costly to a business customer than

Saving Your Voice: Security a Key Component in VoIP Buying Decision

The most important network equipment component to consider is the session border controller for creating secure borders between networks and customer premises.

trunking provider, it might not necessarily be efficient to certify interoperability with every last one, but if customers have a PBX preference, it is good to be ready.

“We are very methodical about how we support unified com-munications, and which PBXs we work with,” Carter said. “Ideally, we would test with every IP-PBX vendor and have, in fact, tested with over 20 of them. The key is to not only test, but document what is tested so that the carrier can pro-vide detail to customers as to how to configure their IP-PBX. Unless vendors standardize, testing will always be important.”

Supporting enterprise mobility raises similar challenges. Business enterprises will want to use their SIP trunking services to extend office VoIP capabilities to as many of their mobilized employees as possible. Trying to certify a service to work with every mobile device on the mar-ket would be a task without end.

Fortunately, Carter said there are a number of mobility solutions that do not require integration with mobile devices. “XO provides a ser-vice called XO Anywhere, which can be used with certain services that provide capabilities like simultane-ous ring, or that let users call from their mobile devices and appear to be calling from their landline.”

The SIP trunking provider also is currently working on develop-ing a fixed-mobile convergence capability that would make mobile service more integrated with the VoIP application and able to be used seamlessly.

Ultimately, when a business is looking at investing in unified com-munications or mobility, they should also consider a SIP trunking service that best meets their requirements. Because these new technologies extend capabilities beyond the corporate campus, they should choose a SIP trunking service that has the network coverage they need to reach all of their offices. Pricing is important, too, but Carter said a single piece of advice above all should be remembered: “Find a partner that will work well with the CPE vendors, will be flexible in their solution, and doesn’t try to cut corners on delivering capabilities to save on price.” l

Ultimately, when a business is looking at investing in unified communications or mobility, they should also consider a SIP trunking service that best meets their requirements.


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toll fraud on a TDM network because call sessions can be compressed on the IP network, allowing for more calls to be made.

Carter said XO’s SIP trunking ser-vice has the capability to recognize call anomalies and detect fraud pat-terns. He also said that voice traffic on a SIP trunk can be carved out and separated from data traffic so that it is not affected by other types of data-focused security attacks.

In addition, there are other steps that can be taken to avert fraud, said Myers, adding, “It takes some education of the business custom-er by the service provider about the threats and measures that can be used.”

Using fraud monitoring software can help, but there are also protec-tive measures that can be taken at the network level. Service providers use firewall software and encryption technology, but the most important

network equipment component to consider is the session border con-troller, for creating secure borders between networks and customer premises.

“Security is becoming a major component and function [of SBCs], and this will become more apparent and necessary as enterprises adopt SIP trunking—and this is not just from an enterprise angle, but from the carrier as well,” said Deborah Kish, principal analyst, communica-tions service provider technology, at Gartner. “That doesn’t mean you have to give up your firewall, but SBCs will add an extra layer of secu-rity that a firewall can’t do.”

Nena Dodson, national enterprise services engineer at XO Communi-cations, agreed that SBCs are key to ensuring SIP trunking security, but not to the exclusion of other security measures. “Ideally, you should use all of these measures—encryption, fire-walls and SBCs—to provide layered

security,” she said. “What an SBC brings is that you can do topology hiding. It also gathers information on unused phone numbers and IP addresses on your network that you may not have known even existed. It helps you know your network better.”

Dodson added that installing firewalls at the enterprise network is an important step in securing the customer VoIP traffic from other applications that may traverse the same infrastructure. Sometimes, the firewall will be inside of the SBC, and other times it will be outside. “The ideal secure situation is to have an SBC on the carrier side linked to an SBC on the customer side, this con-figuration will ensure the maximum amount of security for the customer,” she said.

Where and how firewalls are placed for security also can depend on the nature of the service—wheth-er it is mostly voice or mostly data, Dodson said. “In a mixed voice and

data network, the firewalls will usually be separate from the voice part of the architec-ture,” she said.

Regarding data security, it is important to recognize that MPLS IP VPN is a major component for SIP solu-tions, and that security plays a critical role in ensuring that bandwidth is available for the most mission critical applications. There are edge (appliance) based and cloud based security solutions that can be utilized to ensure that the MPLS portion of the net-work is secure from outside threats.

Meanwhile, SBCs also

support encryption of signaling traffic or content by enabling encryption schemes such as the Transport Layer Security protocol, IP Sec, or the Secure Real-Time Transfer pro-tocol. Gartner’s Kish said that in the future, she can see SBC equipment vendors continually improving the security capabilities of their SBCs by adding, for example, features such as 256 bit encryption.

Businesses looking to buy SBCs have a wide range of vendors to choose from, but increasingly, they may also find their SIP trunking service provider reselling SBCs from various vendors as an added service option, Kish said.

Mason added that this trend is happening partly because enterprise customers want service providers to help them protect their networks. “Customers are concerned about deploying new technologies and having it turn into a Wild West kind of experience,” he said. “They want service providers to help them man-age security by deploying something

like an SBC for them. They are look-ing for providers they can trust with that responsibility.”

These security options are not things that business customers may think of first when they buy SIP trunking and enterprise VoIP servic-es, but Infonetics’ Myers noted that even voice security considerations ultimately affect the bottom line.

“Security of voice trunks is not really top of mind for most busi-nesses,” she said. “They probably are thinking about threats to their data, but voice attacks can result in minutes being stolen, and those lost minutes are a financial cost to them.” l

SBCs are key to ensuring SIP trunking security, but not to the exclusion of other security measures.


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enterprise voip trends & insights for 2012 and beyond

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