IP Communications and Beyond

Every now and then, one of the benefits I like to convey to readers of my blog is an advance peek at some important development or industry-related news of which I'm privy due to my various connections and relationships.

Here's a bunch of such news items -- all related to the goings on at the SIP Forum -- (and in the interest of Full Disclosure you should remember that I'm the President and Managing Director of same.)

The Forum will be issuing a number of announcements in the coming weeks, but because you're reading this, you're getting a nice advance notice on them.

First, the SIP Forum's membership has enjoyed a major surge in membership (both in dues- paying corporate Full Members and free individual "Participant" members) over the last few months. When I first joined the organization in late 2007, the Forum had 25 Full Member companies. Now, the count is up to 46. Check out the current Full Member list here.

The Forum has also experienced a doubling of general membership, which now hovers around 5,000 people from all around the world.


One of the main reasons for this growth is the expanding support and momentum behind the Forum's SIP trunking initiative called SIPconnect, which provides an industry-approved set of rules and guidelines for accomplishing trouble-free direct IP peering between SIP-enabled IP-PBXs and SIP-enabled VoIP service providers, and the growing realization within the industry that achieving interoperability is key to sustained and long-term growth. Here's a link to an analyst whitepaper I authored about SIPconnect.

Other Notable SIP Forum News includes:

Microsoft has Joined the SIP Forum and has committed to actively contributing to the SIPConnect work. Yes, the big gun from Redmond has formally joined the SIP Forum as a Full Member company, and has released, for general distribution, their view of how SIPconnect could be constructed for the upcoming version 1.1 of the specification. This is based on their own extensive experience with their OCS product and extensive discussions with Enterprises and Service Providers.

The SIP Forum has created a depository of SIPconnect 1.1 Scoping Documents, which currently includes the Microsoft document mentioned above, and will be the location of other member contributions as they are made available.

CableLabs -- the joint industry standards body of the North American Cable operators -- has also joined the SIP Forum as a Full Member and CableLabs and its member companies are also committed to contributing to the SIPconnect 1.1 effort.

Broadsoft is also contributing extensive documentation related to their SIP trunking experience, and has agreed to make available their extensive documentation of experience with SIP trunking and the current implementation of SIPconnect 1.0.