Avaya Solutions Rated SIP-Compliant
Business telephony solutions provider Avaya announced today that its Communications Manager and SIP Enablement Services have received SIPconnect Compliant certification. The certification shows that Avaya’s IP products and services are compliant with the board’s SIP trunking.
SIPconnect, an initiative of the SIP Forum, streamlines how service providers and their enterprise customers leverage interactive IP communications services and solutions. A standards-based approach to direct IP peering between SIP-enabled IP PBXs and VoIP service providers, SIPconnect was designed to directly tie enterprise customers to VoIP service providers using an end-to-end IP connection. SIPconnect eliminates the need for an on-premises VoIP gateway, improves voice quality and creates the right foundation for personalized applications and rich media services.
Avaya joins fellow solutions providers Acme Packet, Broadsoft, Cbeyond, Digium, Ingate Systems, and McLeod USA in achieving the certification. The SIPconnect program has been in existence since September.
"The key to full adoption of the SIP standard is the drive towards total interoperability within the industry," said Jay Batson, managing director and chairman of the SIP Forum. "Having so many telecommunications innovators embrace this certification mark furthers our belief in the importance of standardizing requirements necessary to elevate VoIP to traditional phone line levels in terms of reliability and predictability."
Anne Coulombe, SIP product marketing director at Avaya, says the certification means just as much to customers as it does her company. "We’re already hearing from our customers that they wanted some sort of industry certification mark so they didn’t have to do the testing themselves," she states.
For customers, SIP compliance means not only interoperability and greater functionality, but also that a vendor put in hours assuring its software’s readiness for testing. Coulombe says Avaya’s SIP team conducted testing within its research and development group, and spent considerable time making sure its IP applications were working smoothly. In addition, forcing vendors to become SIP compliant could also lead to lower prices.
"I’d argue that SIP compliance will increase [customer] comfort levels; that all these vendors are able to work together, which will mean that it will help vendors look at minimization of cost," Coulombe explains.
Avaya’s SIP trunking certification also represents an indication of changes to come within IP telephony. SIP trunking, which connects enterprise systems with service providers, combining video, voice, or data together on one pipe. Coulombe expects SIP trunking to garner a significant amount of attention throughout 2008.
Avaya, which has been part of the SIP board for about three years, was tested by the compliance committee’s members—a mix of vendors, service providers, customers, and people who build or develop phones and PBX boxes.