I just finished moderating a session on the session initiation protocol, entitled “The State of SIP.” Joining me as panelists for this speaking engagement were Simon Millard, Head of Professional Services at Aculab, Jon Young, vice president of software engineering at Inter-Tel, and Cullen Jennings, Distinguished Engineer, Voice Technology Group at Cisco.

 

Together the three speakers answered questions — from me as well as from the audience — and spoke at length on a variety of subjects related to SIP, including security, presence, interoperability, and the future of SIP.

 

The audience was made up of attendees who had differing levels of SIP knowledge and the speakers did a great job of addressing their comments to folks across the spectrum. Indeed the group fielded questions from people who were brand-new to SIP, who needed a basic overview, to tech-savvy individuals who were wrestling with their own SIP deployments. One thing is for certain: The learning curve never ends, and the questions from all these attendees were compelling and drove the conversation in this interesting session.

 

One question that I had for the panel was about the future of SIP. Ten years ago, many readers of this blog will remember that H.323was all the rage. But the standard became bloated and SIP was born to a market ready for alternatives.

 

I asked the panel if there were any other standards waiting in the wings that threatened to take the momentum from SIP, and how concerned should I be about future proofing my decision to purchase SIP-based solutions today. They all agreed that while no single standard will be around forever, SIP is still ramping up, and there appear to be no major threats waiting in the wings. At the end of the day, the prognosis for SIP is a good one, and no next-gen communications decision making process would be complete without looking at and implementing SIP.

 

I’d like to thank Simon, Jon and Cullen for taking time out of their respective schedules to help educate the Internet Telephony Conference attendees.