Apples and Oranges (SIP Trunking)

Food was both good and bad this weekend. We finally dined out this weekend. On a lark, we decided to try a new restaurant in the area. The restaurant was a remarkable sight. It was beautifully built with interesting artwork throughout. The service was excellent! However, I was there for the food. It was horrible. It seemed as though the chef had been told not to season anything. Their budget was used up building the restaurant. I did not finish anything that was served. That was the bad. The good was I made Chicken Cacciatore this weekend. It is one of my favorite Italian dishes. To change things up, I used sirloin pork chops. This required cooking the dish for 90 minutes in order to have the pork falling off the bone. I topped it with fresh mozzarella cheese and served fettuccine mixed with the sauce. Okay, still not the recipe of the day. On Friday, I promised a dessert so that honor belongs to Apple Tarte Tatin. It is a caramelized apple tart served upside down. It is said to have been invented by the elder of two unmarried sisters in the town of Lamotte-Beuvron.

Caroline Tatin ran the business side of the establishment and her older sister Stephanie Tatin handled the kitchen. Her apple tart was noted for its caramel flavor and texture. One day in 1898 when busy during the hunting season, Stephanie mistakenly put the peeled apple quarters, butter and sugar in the pan without first lining it with pastry. Realizing her mistake, she put pastry on top of the hot apples, baked it until the pastry was done, inverted it onto a serving plate and served the new concoction warm from the oven. It soon became famous throughout France. I have made my addition to the recipe but have preserved its French History.

Oranges (SIP Trunking)

I was reading an interesting cost study regarding SIP Trunking last week when one of the assumptions was that you used a lower ratio of SIP Trunks per employee than TDM Phone lines. This was news to me. This was news to me and I studied the assumption and how the pricing was built with a high degree of skepticism. I decided it must be once again a misuse of the words SIP Trunk verses concurrent call sessions. By way of example, most SMBs will require only one SIP Trunk. Based upon the way Broadvox defines its product offering, we sometimes sell two. To date only one company, an enterprise has required more than two SIP Trunks. However, we sell many concurrent call sessions. The fewest we sell is three and the most is to the maximum bandwidth available. However, if a business has been properly engineered and requires four phone lines, they will need ONE SIP Trunk and FOUR concurrent call sessions. The ratio is not reduced because of the switch from TDM to IP communications.

I hope to speak with the author of the study this week to better understand the assumption or have a correction issued. However, we all should rejoice as Newton's Telecom Dictionary 25^th Edition should be out next month with a definition of SIP Trunking. That should clear it up for everyone.

See you on Wednesday...