VoIP Trunking Services - 3 Opportunities and Challenges

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1 Optimizing VoIP Deployments with Adaptable Customer Premises Equipment: Considerations for Service Providers to Accelerate SIP Deployments A Frost & Sullivan White Paper Michael Brandenburg, Industry Analyst Unified Communications & Collaboration

2 frost.com Introduction... 3 Opportunities and Challenges for SIP Trunking Service Providers... 4 Leverating Highly Capable CPE... 5 Criteria for Selecting Highly Capable CPE... 6 Conclusion... 7 contents

3 Optimizing VoIP Deployments with Adaptable Customer Premises Equipment: Considerations for Service Providers to Accelerate SIP Deployments INTRODUCTION Business communications services are undergoing a fundamental change. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and session initiation protocol (SIP) trunking services are steadily rising to become the preferred communications link from business customers premises to service providers networks, replacing legacy telecommunications services in the process. Frost & Sullivan research finds that SIP trunking services are already well entrenched in North America with over $3.5 billion in estimated annual revenue and expected to grow at a 21.2% compound annual growth rate through Likewise, SIP trunking services are gaining traction in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA); Asia Pacific (APAC); and Latin America (LATAM) regions. Across the globe, VoIP is becoming increasingly available from carriers with global footprints expanding their coverage as well as from in-region providers. The motivations for businesses to embrace SIP trunking services are clear. Along with the cost reductions typically associated with SIP, IP-based trunking services also offer advanced capabilities, such as mobility and disaster recovery. In the case of disaster recovery, SIP trunking and VoIP access services provide a high level of flexibility not available in traditional public switched telephone network (PSTN) or time-division multiplexing (TDM) services. Through customer portals, administrators can quickly redirect voice to alternative communication endpoints in case the primary ones become unavailable. For mobility, multi-ring or follow-me calling, mobile applications and portal features for user extensions can be offered at a service level. Value-added services such as these allow customers to enhance their communications infrastructure, extend the life of their existing on-premises platforms, and even avoid deploying in-house solutions all together. At the same time, the latest unified communications (UC) platforms from vendors such as Microsoft, Cisco and Avaya are fast becoming a driving factor in migrating to SIP trunking services. These IP-based platforms have been developed with SIP services in mind. On these modern platforms customers will incur additional expense to support legacy TDM circuits. For that reason, customers are adopting SIP trunking services as an integral part of their overall unified communications strategy. Ultimately, it is necessary for SIP trunking service providers to support customers on legacy and modern UC platforms, as well as those that are in transition between the two. 3

4 frost.com With so much momentum behind the transition to SIP trunking services, service providers should be eager to seize the market opportunity. While early entrants to the SIP trunking market sought out businesses willing to be on the cutting edge, ongoing market success will be secured by those service providers that can most quickly and effectively deliver these next-generation voice services to mainstream customers. Speed and agility in this market are key, and will require highly automated back-end processes as well as highly capable edge customer premises equipment (CPE). This paper discusses how advanced CPE platforms can drive operational efficiencies, optimize customer deployments, accelerate delivery times, and ultimately enable service providers to take full advantage of the worldwide transition to IP-based communications services. OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR SIP TRUNKING SERVICE PROVIDERS It is clear that VoIP access and SIP trunking services are on a growth trajectory and will ultimately replace legacy circuit-based communications services, whether customers have decided to upgrade to IP-based unified communications solutions or maintain existing call-control platforms. To capitalize on this opportunity, incumbent carriers, competitive carriers, as well as network service providers seeking to expand into communications services are all trying to gain a foothold in the market. In such a competitive landscape, it is becoming clear that overall market share leadership will be determined by not only competitive pricing and features, but also the speed and agility by which service providers can quickly sign up customers and deploy their services. To that end, there are several challenges that can hold back a service provider from taking full advantage of the move to IP-based services. Time to Deploy: The single biggest operational challenge for service providers is to minimize the time between accepting the customer s order and activating the SIP trunking services. Often riddled with manual processes across multiple service platforms, SIP trunking deployments with excessive lead times not only restrain market growth, but also cool customer attitudes toward the transition to VoIP services. 4

5 Optimizing VoIP Deployments with Adaptable Customer Premises Equipment: Considerations for Service Providers to Accelerate SIP Deployments Myriad Deployment Variables: With so many legacy PBXs and modern unified communications platforms installed at customer sites today, a significant amount of configuration and likely some trial and error go into incorporating SIP trunking services into the customers communications infrastructure. Given the sheer number of variables that may factor into a customer installation, most SIP trunking services still require an on-site visit by a field service technician. This creates additional lead-time and scheduling challenges in an already lengthy deployment window. Ensuring Quality of Service: Unlike the dedicated circuits that exist in legacy telecommunications services, SIP trunking services operate on the best-effort, IP-based network. Furthermore, SIP-based voice services often share bandwidth with the data on access networks. To ensure that call quality and contracted service-level agreements are maintained after a migration to SIP, it is incumbent on service providers to constantly monitor issues that may negatively affect voice services. Optimizing Customer Deployment and Service: Building up the infrastructure to deliver SIP trunking services to businesses represents a large capital investment. However, the ongoing costs for maintaining the necessary staff of support specialists and field service professionals can quickly escalate out of control for ill-prepared service providers. Multiple on-site customer visits, or truck rolls, are the most expensive form of support due to fuel and transportation costs and unproductive staff time, and they also inconvenience the customer. To streamline and accelerate deployments and minimize truck rolls, operators will need to find the right mix of tools and processes that enable them to address many of their customers issues quickly and remotely. LEVERAGING HIGHLY CAPABLE CPE Customer premises equipment, deployed by the service provider, is a critical component of any SIP trunking service. When thoughtfully deployed, a highly capable or multifunction CPE can mitigate many of the ongoing challenges faced by SIP service providers. A CPE platform cannot only offer the IP-based equivalent to the demarcation point found in legacy telecommunication services, but can also serve as a foundation for streamlined and secure integration between customer platforms and operator services. For customers with older PBXs, the CPE platform should offer media gateway functionality in order to provide the benefits of SIP trunking while emulating circuit-based TDM trunks. Equally important is the need for the CPE to serve as an enterprise session border controller (E-SBC) to connect SIP trunking services to IP-based unified communications platforms. Unfortunately, many UC platforms and SIP trunking providers often downplay the role of an E-SBC deployed at the edge of the customer network. An E-SBC deployed as part of a SIP trunking offering provides media conversion, protocol normalization and prioritization functionality at the customer edge, rather than within the provider s core network. Furthermore, the E-SBC becomes the gatekeeper for all session traffic, allowing service providers to proactively monitor for both quality of service (QoS) and potential security threats on all of the customer s media streams. Highly capable CPE distinguishes itself from standalone media gateways or E-SBCs based on the breadth of capabilities and features available on a single hardware appliance. A vendor s CPE product should, at minimum, roll media gateway functionality for legacy PBX integration and E-SBC functionality into a single appliance to be considered for a SIP trunking deployment. Market-leading CPE products go even further, enabling the provider to offer additional value-added services. Such services could include remote office survivability and fallback, VPN-less access by remote UC devices, and advanced disaster recovery capabilities. 5

6 frost.com CRITERIA FOR SELECTING HIGHLY CAPABLE CPE In order to optimize their CPE investment, service providers need to evaluate products from CPE vendors with a well-defined set of criteria. While each service provider infrastructure is unique, the primary considerations for selecting both a SIP trunking CPE vendor and product are nearly universal. To select the most effective CPE solutions, service providers should consider the following: Single Device for Multiple Deployment Options: Service providers looking to accelerate and optimize SIP trunking deployments should consider a single CPE platform that can serve as both a media gateway for legacy PBX support and an E-SBC for modern UC platforms. While the media gateway and E-SBC markets are littered with low-cost, dedicated devices, the single-purpose nature of these products can actually create additional obstacles for optimized SIP trunking deployments. Multiple, single-purpose CPE not only require field technicians to have a working knowledge of each, but also demand that the service providers and installation teams maintain separate inventories of each. Furthermore, vendor support for each CPE requires distinct tracking of warranty coverage, device failure rates, software updates, and problem resolutions. On the other hand, multi-function devices allow a single CPE product to be deployed at every location and configured individually to support whatever customer infrastructure is encountered. Highly capable, single-sourced CPE streamlines the relationship between provider and vendor. Modular Design: Along with a single CPE platform for SIP trunking deployments, a flexible, modular design should be a key consideration. CPE devices with modular design features afford service providers the versatility to deploy the specific hardware and interfaces to support specific customer installations. This modular design also allows service providers to cost-effectively support customers still in transition from legacy PBXs to IP-based UC platforms. Media gateway modules could be temporarily loaned out to customers in support of their legacy hardware, then removed and returned to the service provider inventory after the customer s migration to an end-to-end, IP-based solution is completed. Modularity also supports field service optimization by allowing operations to maintain a minimal amount of inventory and enabling the replacement of the specific failed components rather than the entire CPE device. Finally, a modular design allows greater flexibility for service providers to preconfigure and order CPE devices with the exact hardware and software load to meet their needs, minimizing the amount of time technicians need to spend preparing devices for field deployments. Centralized Management: In order to accelerate and optimize SIP trunking deployments, service providers need to minimize the time to install and configure CPE. In support of this, solutions that support a centralized management platform should be favored. Under such a platform, devices can be preconfigured using templates for common deployment scenarios even before the device physically arrives at the customer site. This will deliver the added benefit of requiring minimal configuration support from installers in the field. This type of zero-touch configuration can also enable service providers to offer tech-savvy customers the option of self-installs and remove the need for another truck roll. Interoperability: The SIP protocol standards are defined very broadly, creating frequent interoperability challenges between customer systems and the provider s own core network platforms. Highly capable CPE devices with E-SBC functionality, certified against the majority of the UC vendors, allow service providers to support a greater number of customer deployment scenarios. Certified devices simplify the more common deployments, allowing service providers to focus their efforts on more complex interoperability issues. 6

7 Optimizing VoIP Deployments with Adaptable Customer Premises Equipment: Considerations for Service Providers to Accelerate SIP Deployments Security: The challenges associated with interconnecting premises-based UC platforms with carrier VoIP or SIP services are often underestimated. In reality, the UC platform is as vulnerable to attacks from hackers as the data network. Telephony denial of service attacks (TDOS) are very real occurrences, often part of a multi-pronged assault on a business s information resources. Threats also exist where hackers attempt to commandeer communications links for their own nefarious uses. Every enterprise must be protected from malicious attacks, and every interface to the outside world can potentially be exploited by an attacker. Due to the specific needs of media sessions, an E-SBC, and not the corporate firewall, is better suited to protect the UC infrastructure. Virtualization: Service providers should give serious consideration to the CPE vendors virtual machine capabilities and the impact that virtualization can have on future services. Through virtualization, service providers have a built-in platform to deliver additional value-added services. For example, providers can embed a virtualized PBX solution to support branch survivability or an application delivery controller for converged voice and data networks. In essence, CPE devices with embedded virtualization offer a platform to provide additional services on top of standard SIP trunking services. CONCLUSION Being competitive in the SIP trunking services market is no longer about having the lowest price. Whether in established or emerging markets, the most successful providers will be those that can strike while the iron is hot, delivering cutting-edge VoIP services when and where the customer needs them. To capture a share of a high-growth market, service providers must accelerate the time it takes to deliver services to customers. A highly capable CPE platform can give a SIP provider a competitive edge. Enabled with the right customerpremises gear, providers can streamline their delivery processes, drive operational efficiencies, minimize the time spent at the customer location, and ultimately create an environment to deliver a host of new valueadded services in the future. 7

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