Why use SIP trunks?  Thought you’d never ask!

Briefly, some key benefits are…

• Cost savings
• Agility, Scalability
• Simplify, Consolidate and Manage Telecom Resources Efficiently
• Maintain Business Continuity

Take cost savings for example.  How many circuits do you have connected to your legacy PBX?  Local trunks, a long distance trunk… then you have your Internet and WAN connections perhaps.  Imagine if you could consolidate the local, long distance and Internet or WAN into a single data circuit.  If you wish to add redundancy, which is always a good idea from the standpoint of business continuity, then add for that.  As you consolidate and more efficiently utilize circuits and hardware, reduce overall hardware and all associated costs.  Additionally, reduce or eliminate charges for long distance calls within the US.

Good question! Glad you asked!

You may be aware of SIP and its use in VoIP telephony. SIP is an acronym for Session Initiation Protocol which is the protocol used in VoIP calls for call session setup and tear down. SIP trunking is a protocol or method used to provide logical communication paths or call paths for VoIP calls between your PBX and your SIP trunk provider or carrier.

SIP trunking works over your data network, over the public internet or a private WAN connection between your site and your SIP trunk provider.  Essentially, in simple terms, you can take an existing data connection and use an IP connection to connect your PBX to your SIP trunk provider.  It would be somewhat the equivalent of using an PRI connection to connect your PBX to your PSTN provider.  Your SIP trunk provider has a data network with interconnections into the PSTN.  Your SIP trunk provider servers are a gateway to the PSTN.

Has your company announced a move and made you responsible for moving the technology?  That’s enough to send many folks running to brush up their resume!  You and I both know though that professionals will buck up and get through it but it’s a lot of work, a lot of responsibility, and failure is not an option!  On the flip side though, it’s a nice feather in your cap when you run a successful move!

My first experience with a move was early in my career when I was a windows server admin at Honeywell-Measurex and participated in moving our headquarters data center from one building to another.  My role was minor.  I learned something though.  We had an excellent IT Director who led the move.  My observations from his example taught me that with good planning and diligence a move can be quite smooth and a real feather in your cap!  Since then, I’ve lead two moves of my own; with responsibility for all that is IT, including end user PC/phones, the voice/data infrastructure as well as the data center.  I’d like to share a few key lessons I learned along the way.  Today, I’ll start with three… more will come in future posts.