MARKET REPORT SIP
“Therefore, first and foremost, SIP trunks must deliver, no matter what features they come with and whatever
the cost may be, crystal clear voice. ” Paul Wakefield, SIP Trunking Product Manager at Gamma
ED SAYS…
The SIP trunk market is still growing strongly in terms of installed numbers. The
headline percentage growth fi gures are tailing off as a result of the statistics – you’re
growing a far bigger base each month/quarter/year etc. There are some great points
made by the channel players here and Rob Smith’s succinct analysis of the two main
offerings in the market, in terms of the cloud environment to which IP phones are
integrated with, is spot on.
what he sees as being two main
o erings in the market, in terms
of the cloud environment to
which IP phones are integrated
with.
“IP Phones that support an
open SIP environment such as
Broadsoft (now part of Cisco)
BroadWorks or IP Phones
which are designed speci cally
for integration with Microsoft
Skype for Business or Teams.
ose handsets, which are
designed for open SIP, can
work with a large variety of
commercial and open source
platforms, as well as a signi cant
number of cloud service
o erings. What makes these
devices speci c to a particular
platform or service, is the
customisation of the device
con guration. is enables
tight integration of the device
capabilities to the hosted service
capabilities, including feature
synchronisation between
the device and service. is
will ensure the optimal user
experience is achieved, and
providing consultancy services
in achieving this is something
the engineering team in Nuvias
is highly experienced in. is
customisation can be controlled
and delivered through the
Nuvias Dovetail service, through
the hosted platform device
management capabilities, or a
combination of the two.
ose handsets, which are
designed for working within a
Microsoft Skype for Business
or Teams environment, such
as the Poly, AudioCodes or
Yealink range, will be speci c
to that service. Although these
are not from Microsoft as the
vendor, they will be tied to the
Microsoft environment. Within
this deployment model the
setup of the devices in terms
of line con guration or service
integration is taken care of by
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30 | Comms Business Magazine | May 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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May.ai 3 16/04/2019 17:25:54
POLYCOM VVX 250 BUSINESS IP
PHONE
The Polycom VVX 250 business IP phone is a
modern, four-line, basic IP desk phone with colour
display (320 x 240-pixel resolution), 2x Gig-E
ports and 4 soft keys. The vendor says it is ideal
for home offi ce/SoHo and cubicle workers.
the Skype for
Business or
Teams service
itself. ere
is a range of
additional
device
customisation
however, as
well as other
operational
aspects
such as managing rmware
upgrades, collection of log les,
or monitoring and reporting on
the device status that needs to be
considered.”
According to Paul Taylor
at Voice ex, a proprietary
handset will always have a larger
feature set than a non-propriety
handset.
“However, many hosted
platforms don’t have a
proprietary handset o ering
which could be viewed as a
disadvantage, but with the
market moving to WebRTC
applications the intelligence is
within the app or web interface
for UC and collaboration
features. All being said, the
UK loves a phone on the desk,
it is of the utmost importance
to only use approved/tested
handsets. Testing is all well and
good, but the handset needs
to be connected to the hosted
authentication server - you don’t
want to manually con gure
every handset at set up or every
time there is an upgrade.”
How important is
interoperability testing?
Rob Smith, Technical Director
at Nuvias believes that
interoperability testing is an
important aspect, which needs to
be undertaken for every device
rmware release to ensure the
expected quality of experience is
maintained for a hosted or cloud
platform.
“ is is typically catered
for by both vendor and service
provider. Firstly, the vendor
interoperability testing needs
to be completed to ensure
all features and interaction
with the cloud service work
as designed and secondly, the
service provider will typically
run regression testing to verify
their device con guration and
the device rmware version
against the cloud platform
or service. Many vendors
will make available a prede
ned test plan that can be
executed as the basis to verify
all basic and advanced call
scenarios, including audio and
video, telephony services, call
control services, and feature
synchronisation capabilities
are con rmed functioning as
required. e engineering team
at Nuvias provides extensive
support to our reseller partners
to ensure the successful
integration and testing of IP
handsets with their chosen
cloud platform or service.”
Paul Tailor at Voice ex
maintains a proprietary phone
will always have a better feature
set.
“ e SIP protocol is more
or less standard for handsets, so
most will work, it’s all about the
feature set. e handset is only
half the story, the hosted market
is growing, however there’s a
lot of smoke and mirrors. A
telephony application may be in
a Data Centre but if it’s a single
instance it still has a single point
of failure.”
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