Interview with Marc Robins – Managing Director of the SIP* Forum

April 11, 2008

By Tom Cross
 
Tom Cross: Marc tell us more about the SIP Forum?
 
Marc Robins: The SIP Forum was originally founded 8 years ago as an industry association to promote the adoption of SIP by the IP telephony industry.   Fast forward to today and now every product is SIP- compliant. Since the original “battle” has been won, now the SIP Forum is on to job #2 – solving interoperability problems to allow different SIP networks and various IP communications systems to seamlessly interoperate together. This is a critical need because SIP is a complex standard and there are a number of different options available to developers of services and equipment.
 
Tom Cross: Tell us about SIPconnect and the new SIPconnect Compliant Program?
 
Marc Robins: The SIP Forum is responsible for producing new industry technical recommendations that provide a specific set of rules and guidelines that determine which RFC and deployment option to use when and where. One example is the recent SIPconnect Technical Recommendation, which provides rules and guidelines for accomplishing SIP trunking, and in essence, direct IP peering between SIP-enabled IP-PBXs and SIP-enabled VoIP service providers. SIPconnect is a voluntary but peer-reviewed process
 
The SIPconnect Compliant Program is an associated certification program designed to certify equipment vendors and service providers as SIPconnect compliant and thus offer the highest degree of confidence that they will be able to accomplish trouble-free SIP trunking. To be approved in the SIPconnect Compliant Program, there is a process involving paying a fee (which can be applied to Full membership in the Forum) and completing a comprehensive survey. In addition, the applicant must demonstrate that they are interoperable through documentation examples including a self-assessment. There is a SIP Forum committee that reviews each survey – the SIPconnect Compliant committee essentially acts as a watchdog and makes recommendations for improvements with the goal of guiding companies along the right path. Nine companies currently hold SIPconnect Compliance. 
 
Tom Cross: What else is the SIP Forum working on?
 
Marc Robins: The SIP Forum is now working on other technical recommendations on SIP Security and is examining other areas that need similar support such as UC-Unified Communications. There will also be other licensing programs as appropriate.   The SIP Forum is a vendor and service provider-agnostic, non-profit association. The SIP Forum relies on volunteers to help drive the cause, the work and the new initiatives. There are currently 40 Full Member companies that support the SIP Forum, For a full list of Full Member companies, visit www.sipforum.org. If you have any questions regarding the SIP Forum, please call Marc Robins, SIP Forum Managing Director at (718) 548-7245 or email marc.robins@sipforum.org
 
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*Definition and brief explanation - SIP-Session Initiation Protocol is a "signaling" system for connecting, monitoring and disconnecting connections across the internet using intelligent devices (end points). SIP is not about voice as it is about “presence” and “rich media communications” providing enhanced information (e.g. maps, availability), intelligence (e.g. automatic event-notification), and context (e.g. reference material) to single (1-1) and multi-party (1-X, X-1, X-X) communications sessions.
The benefits of SIP briefly is that with SIP Trunking, the IP media stream coming from within the enterprise stays as an IP media stream and passes to anywhere within the enterprise or across the boundary of the enterprise to another enterprise via IP. This reduces the need for local telephone systems using instead hardware media gateways at the enterprise edge and carrier edge (often referred to as the PSTN) producing considerable savings.   In addition, considerable savings can also be found in eliminating expensive telephone desksets by using intelligent softphones.
 
If you want to know more, register for SIP Essentials Public Sessions in New York – May 12-13, Specific course details can be found at: http://www.bcrtraining.com/course-info/sip.php or this information is also part of OCS-101 and SIP Essentials 2.0c available in the onsite and online courses. The online version is $299 for SIP 2.0c and for $499 as part of OCS-101 Office Communications Server online version per person or less with discounts. For more information go to http://www.techtionary.com or please call Tom Cross at 303-594-1694 or cross@gocross.com Discounts are also available to members of the SIP Forum for online and custom courses. 
 


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