The SIP School

Birmingham, UK, 30th September, 2009

The SIP School has gained another great client and endorsement for its SIP training and Certification program and this time it's the Colorado-based telephone specialist, TeleMatrix. TeleMatrix is a leader in the provision of telephones to the commercial, hospitality, and health care markets. TeleMatrix has over 7 million analog, SIP and Digital Centrex telephones installed at over 30,000 customer sites worldwide.

On deciding to utilize the services of the The SIP School and also offer these services to their dealer channel via their own customised web portal, TeleMatrix COO Jose Quiros says, "TeleMatrix takes the training of staff and channel partners seriously especially when it comes to SIP.  So being able to offer our proprietary IP Configuration Tool training and The SIP School's comprehensive SSCA™ certification program, demonstrates our commitment as a market leader in SIP-based telephony."

The modules include training in areas such as TCP/IP, IP addresses, Switches and VLANs, DSCP and QoS, SIP Server functionality, Time Server, DHCP and TFTP.  The course also includes material specific to TeleMatrix products such as the IP Mass Configuration Utility Installation, and IP Mass Administration Utility (Overview, Setup, Discovering Phones, Checking Status). This will be enhanced with a secure Knowledge Server for TeleMatrix products accessible only to Value Added Resellers that meet TeleMatrix SIP certification requirements.

 "Our SSCA™ certification is certainly the only one worth attaining regardless of which training company you choose to use as it's now recognised by so many important companies and organisations around the world", states Graham Francis, CEO of The SIP School.

About TeleMatrix

TeleMatrix, Inc. is a certified Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) and leading ISO 9001 and RoHS-certified manufacturer of SIP corded, DECT SIP cordless, analog, and Digital Centrex telephones for hotel, education, health care, and general business applications. Through the 2006 merger of TeleMatrix and Scitec, the combined companies have deployed 7 million telephones at 30,000 commercial customer locations worldwide.

Do you fire up your Gmail client to send an email to another Gmail user?  And would that email fail to arrive if you used Outlook instead?  Of course not and it's all down to the standard email protocol called SMTP.  Every email client supports it so you don't have to worry what the other person is using.  Likewise, HTTP delivers web content regardless of the browser being used.

This has always been the promise of SIP (the Session Initiation Protocol).  Designed to establish, manage and 'tear down' communication channels between any media device, anywhere.  Sound good?

SIP in Unified Communications

I'm not going to give you a definition of Unified Communications (UC) here, just hit Google and wade through all the interpretations that pop up. I do however, want to talk about how SIP 'underpins' UC. 

It does this by ensuring that all elements of a business UC solution can establish connections to work together.  It also allows for 'mid session' information to be passed between these elements to enhance the communications experience.  A good example of this is starting up a whiteboard application with a colleague to give your existing conversation another dimension.

SIP/SIMPLE

Now UC isn't just about Instant Messaging, but I need to start somewhere. 

The IETF SIMPLE (SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions) working group focuses on the application of SIP to Instant messaging (IM) and Presence services. Invariably their work will affect any UC solution.  

Now you may not know this, but when you use IM you become a 'Presentity'.  That is, you are an 'entity' with a presence state i.e. online, not available etc. So now, if someone wants to see your presence state, their IM client sends a SIP SUBSCRIBE message to your IM server to 'follow' you. If you change your presence state i.e. off to lunch your IM client will send a NOTIFY message to your 'followers'.  All of this is defined in RFC  3265, overseen by the SIMPLE working group. 

They have also overseen the development of a number of RFCs that cover how presence information is coded in XML documents. These documents are carried in the body of a SIP message and the use of XML here can be taken advantage of by applications to facilitate interoperability and automation of business processes.

SIP/SIMPLE in Action

So, in the background SIP/SIMPLE is delivering (to you) presence state updates for the people you are following.  Click on a 'buddy' to start a chat and SIP will carry the message.  If you now want to speak with your friend, 'click to call' and SIP sets up the channel through an INVITE. Whilst you are talking you can fire up your Webcam and SIP will establish this connection for you without affecting your voice connection.  Don't forget you can bring another person in on the conversation by initiating a conference; SIP can take care of that as well. In effect, it's SIP that connects everything together though it's important to remember that it's the applications being used that are making people more effective in their work.

Open Sesame

Because SIP is an open standard, all UC solutions should be able to work with each other seamlessly.  Unfortunately, although everyone has their own presence capability there is no way to 'federate' (or join) them.

Today, if you are on a Cisco system you can't see who is present on an Avaya system. Maybe they'd just like you to buy their solution.

The push for Federations

But hold on!  Microsoft and IBM announced (at Voicecon Orlando) that they will support Intra-domain federation so that a company with UC solutions from these two vendors will be a step closer to full UC support regardless of platform and client.  Will this 'shake up' other manufacturers into doing the same? And how long will it be until SIP gives us the same 'transparent' interoperability that SMTP and HTTP do? Only time will tell.

For more information on SIP training and SSCA™ certification, visit - www.thesipschool.com

Birmingham, West Midlands, Wednesday, 12^th August 2009

The SIP School has gained another big 'thumbs up' for its SIP training and SSCA™ certification service and this time it's from Alan Percy the Director of Market Development at AudioCodes.

Alan says, "I've found The SIP School materials to be quite helpful in getting our customers and partners started with their SIP education and very easy to use and follow.  For those just getting started with SIP, The SIP School is an excellent resource that I personally recommend."

Graham Francis, CEO at The SIP School said: "Getting a recommendation for our training and certification from someone with the standing that Alan has in the world of SIP and VoIP is just great news for us and it again shows that forward thinking companies understand the need for top class training on SIP along with a method for proving skill levels through our SSCA™ certification program.

AudioCodes Ltd is based out of Israel with locations all over the world.  They design, manufacture and sell advanced Voice over IP and converged VoIP and Data networking products and applications to Service Providers and Enterprises. 

If you and your company are involved in Voice over IP and Unified Communications then there's no doubt you'll have heard about SIP (the Session Initiation Protocol).  You may be (even a little bit) excited about all the things it promises to achieve by enabling multivendor products and services to work together.  However, sometimes it's good and even necessary to just stop and look closely at what's actually happening with SIP, who's using it and what lies ahead for this most disruptive of protocols! 

So let's start by asking,

What is SIP?

Well, SIP is boring!

Ok, to me it's not boring. However to people who simply want to make phone calls and use IM or their Unified Communications client to 'reduce human latency' (yes, that's a real UC benefit) it's not really something they care about.  Who wants to talk about signalling protocols, new SIP methods and the work of the IETF working groups?  Not your customers that's for sure - all they want to know is will it work, how much and will it save them money?

Who's using it and Why?

In reality a lot of people are using SIP without really knowing about it as it is replacing a number of existing proprietary protocols in IP handsets, PBXs and of course is starting to displace digital trunks.  Yes, I know that it doesn't provide all the features that a 'proprietary' protocol does. SIP can help in cutting PSTN access costs, integrate voice, presence, messaging, and video services for a great Unified Communications solution.  Include the possibility of tying all of these services to business process applications; surely that beats the need for some obsolete phone feature that is pointless supporting anymore.

So, how is it developing?

It's the responsibility of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and its working groups to see that the protocol is developed in a structured manner, making it easy for companies to implement SIP in their products.  This, as we all know, has not been plain sailing, hence the need for Interop testing to make sure things work together.  Of course Interop testing is something that should continue to be done.  It is interesting though that at an IETF conference (in 2008), one of the lead architects of SIP (Jonathon Rosenberg of Cisco Systems) suggested that instead of forging ahead developing SIP using the original concept of it being a pure Peer 2 Peer (P2P) protocol, the many SIP 'working groups' should take into account that SIP is rarely deployed this way and should maybe focus on making SIP work better when there are things like NATs, Firewalls and Session Border Controllers in it's path. This is an 'enlightened' suggestion and shows that 'Real World' experiences can effect the ongoing development of the protocol. 

To build on this great work being done, the Basic Level of Interoperability for SIP Services (BLISS) working group has the charter of documenting variations of SIP implementations including interoperability issues in order to help companies develop products to work better in a heterogeneous environment.

Providers of the Service

It's hard to ignore that there are so many providers now offering SIP trunking services, a great thing for customer choice and flexibility. Also in view of the current economic climate it is a good way to offer customers a more economic alternative to traditional digital lines.  This is good news if things work well but if not then customers will get frustrated and complain about being sold a technology that's not mature enough.  Well, how can you ensure things run smoothly?  A good start point is checking if PBXs and other SIP systems as well as SIP Trunks are 'SIP Connect' compliant.  This is a great recommendation from the SIP Forum that attempts to make connectivity issues a thing of the past, so go to their website and read all about it.

Get tooled up

So as SIP is the 'plumbing' that makes things work and you call a plumber when your boiler breaks, doesn't it make sense to call a SIP expert to fix your SIP/Communication problems?  Why not go one step further and get a SIP expert involved in the early stages such as planning and network design. This way they can advise on the right combination of products to use to meet your needs plus give you critical advice on what to do when adding new SIP services to your network. This ensures that you don't break your existing infrastructure. 

So much more to say

As I said earlier, it is often necessary to stop and look at what is really happening with SIP and by doing this you'll put yourself in a great position to understand what vendors are doing with their products and maybe see if everyone is working toward the ultimate goal of true interoperability or if everything is interoperable as long as it's from one manufacturer.  We'll see.

BICSI recognise The SIP School™

Birmingham, West Midlands, Tuesday, June 23^rd, 2008

Birmingham based reseller; Vocale has gained another major endorsement for its SIP training and SSCA™ certification service and this time it's from BICSI, the professional association supporting the information transport systems (ITS) industry.

The statement from BICSI is as follows

"Effective May 15th, 2009, BICSI recognizes The SIP School training for the following BICSI Continuing Education Credits (CECs)."

The relevant BICSI courses and the number of credits earned via The SIP School are listed here and more information on these courses can be found on the BICSI website

·         RCDD - 12 Continuing Education Credits (CECs)

·         NTS - 12 CECs

·         Installer - 12 CECs

·         Technician - 12 CECs

·         Certified Trainer - 12 CECs

Graham Francis, Managing director at Vocale Ltd said: "Getting recognition from an organization such as BICSI shows the importance of good solid training on the protocol that is shaking up the Telecoms industry"

"Our SSCA™ certification on SIP is a valuable certification for anyone working with SIP to strive for and with more 'industry giants' announcing their support over the coming weeks it's becoming a 'must have' for installation, support and network engineers whatever company they work for", he said.

So I've been on Twitter for a few weeks and gathered some followers and followed people that I think will have something interesting to say - especially regarding SIP and VoIP etc.   Yet, I wanted more so... I decided to play with various Twitter clients and apps that have come to my attention over the past few weeks and boy am I loving all this.

Ping.fm (www.ping.fm)

This is great as it allows me to send one message out and Ping.fm will update my status on LinkedIn, Facebook, Delicious and loads more - perfect time saver

Hootsuite (www.hootsuite.com)

This builds on Ping.fm where if I tweet from Hootsuite it will pass onto Ping.fm and onwards from there to my other accounts... Where Hootsuite adds more features (for me) is it has the ability to let me post a message but set a delivery day/time - perfect for spreading out tweets and not driving people crazy with a lot in the space of a few minutes.   When it's working, I think you can also link to Googles adsense and earn a few cents (but don't give up the day job).  Another top feature is that if you shorten your URLs using their own ow.ly feature, when followers click on the link Hootsuite will gather stats the click.  You can then see how popular things you are sending out actually are.  Oh, and you can have multiple Twitter accounts all available under one logon.

Twhirl (www.twhirl.com)

I've been using Twirl as my client since starting and love it's simple interface and notification 'pop up' ... it may not be for you but it's worth a try.

Tweetdeck (www.tweetdeck.com)

Heard so much about this app that I needed to try it.  Ok, you can organise your Friends, Direct Messages and Group friends together etc but I'm still not convinced - I need to stick with it to see how this pans out.  One cool feature is that it connects to Facebook and shows you your friends status updates from there.

Twollo (www.twollo.com)

Great site for finding people that you may like to follow.  If you are interest in something like VoIP, then Twollo can either suggest or autoconnect you to people in the directory that have that tag associated with them.  A good way to build up the usefulness of Twitter.

And now for the iPhone (via their Apps store) I've been using

Twitterfon - working out great for me, but now downloaded the new Tweetdeck which (once I've managed to logon) I'm sure will be brilliant...

I'll keep you posted on any more Twitter fun I get up to...  and if you want to follow me on Twitter - @MrSIP

Ok then, it's the top site for SIP training and certification and it looks like this...

We've got the best SIP training available that's interactive and engaging for the student along with the SSCA™ certification program backed by Panasonic, Mitel, Ingate and more... 

Other site features include...

• Free Selling SIP module
  
• Free SIP and Unified Communications module
• Free Lan/Wan - DHCP module
• Wiki and Directory where companies can post their product details for FREE!
• Discussion groups
• Video library of SIP releated clips from Youtube
• Twitter updates via @MrSIP

So, even if you don't need our training we'd really appretiate it if you could take a minute to visit the site and let us know what you think.

Graham

Mitel 'endorse' The SIP School™

Birmingham, West Midlands, Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Birmingham based reseller; Vocale has gained another major endorsement for its SIP training and certification service and this time it's from Mitel Ltd.  Anshu Prasad from the Mitel 'SIP center of excellence' in Kanata, Canada says "Further to the successful introduction of The SIP School 'Mitel Style' and SSCA™ certification program into the Mitel Networks education curriculum, the Mitel 'SIP Center of Excellence' is pleased to announce that it fully supports and endorses The SIP School and the SSCA™ as its program of choice for SIP training and certification for its own technical staff, channel partners and clients."

Graham Francis, Managing director at Vocale Ltd said: "Mitel are a global player in the Unified Communications and SIP market and to get this endorsement really proves that companies recognise that good training and certification on SIP is a requirement for this business"

"I've said many times now that the demand for e-learning is going to grow over the next few years as it's not only the least cost alternative but also the green alternative to classroom based training.  And watch out for more 'industry giants' announcing their support over the coming weeks", he said.

With Skype For SIP, your business can:

• Receive and manage inbound calls from the 405 million Skype users worldwide on SIP-enabled PBX systems, connecting the company website to the PBX system using Skype click-to-call buttons
  
  
• Place calls via Skype to landlines and mobile phones worldwide from any connected SIP-enabled PBX, saving your business money with Skype's low rates
  
  
• Purchase Skype online numbers to receive calls to the corporate PBX from landlines or mobile phones
  
  
• Manage Skype calls using your existing hardware and system applications such as call routing, conferencing, phone menus, voicemail and call recording and logging - no additional downloads or training are required
  

An interesting day at the Unified Communications Expo in London, Olympia on 12th March (I kept away from day 1 on the 11th).  I spent most of it wandering around looking at other seminars and also talking to people about SIP ~ especially if they have any training requirements for their technical staff and what I found was that overall, people are still confused about SIP and even unsure if it's something they need training on at all..!  This confuses me as a lot of products on display rely on SIP and please don't tell me that everything works ok yet!  Or maybe it does as long as customers stay 'locked-in' to one supplier that has only tested SIP on their own kit and not looking to honor the principles of SIP by opening up networks and solutions so that the customer has more choice...  If this is so, they may as well carry on using their own proprietary protocols. But SIP is not going away, it IS being built into all PBX's and IP Phones and when you add SIP Trunking into the equation - it's a protocol that has got to be understood properly.

Anyway, our Seminar (in the VoIP business theatre sponsored by Siemens) on 'Understanding SIP' seemed to go down well to a packed house.  The main points I tried to get across in the seminar were:

1.       SIP is an evolving protocol so make sure suppliers can support what they sell.

2.       Look at manufacturers and how they are supporting SIP now and what their roadmaps for development are.

3.       Get help by looking at and even getting involved with working groups such as BLISS.

4.       If you are a manufacturer, get involved with the SIP Forum by looking at their SIP Connect program and even attending their SIPit events.

5.       That The SIP School is the best place to learn about SIP.

6.       You can get accredited (SSCA™) and be recognised by companies such as Mitel, Panasonic, Ingate etc.

7.       In a 'Down Economy' try eLearning as an alternative to classroom training - you don't have to cut out training altogether as people have a tendency to do in tough times.

8.       eLearning is the 'Green' alternative.

9.       Use the FREE "Interactive Directory" at http://wiki.thesipschool.com to advertise your VoIP/SIP products and services and help to grow this 'global' directory.

10.   Ask tough questions of any supplier when looking at new Unified Comms solutions and listen closely to their answers.  The last thing you need is your UC solution 'breaking' when you apply Windows updates, upgrade firmware in IP Phones or upgrade your Firewall etc.

The slides for the show are available here (scroll down the profile 1st - though they don't make much sense without Audio)

That's it for this blog and I'll be attending the Convergence Summit (North) next week and be on a panel talking about SIP Trunking with a focus on the selling!  I'll let you know how it goes.

So in one corner we have Skype, use it for free to call anyone in the world as long as they also have Skype.  A great product, great features and it just works!  In the other corner we have SIP.  SIP is pretty much taking over the world of 'business telecoms' with most manufacturers' kit being supplied with a SIP stack inside.  Along with hundreds of providers of SIP trunking services SIP is really starting to make way headway though there is a lot of room left for growth.  I'm expecting 2009 to be a big year for SIP trunking as people look for ways to save money.

Now as Skype uses a 'version' of Jabber for its protocol there obviously exists these 'two worlds' of VoIP and it's an ideal (or dream, if you like) that they both play nice with each other.  This means that there are plenty of people and companies out there trying to work out how to do this.  On the mobile side of things, check out Fring which allows you to use one device to manage SIP, MSN and Skype accounts as well as a few more.  Not quite 'integration' but nice anyway.  Also, Asterisk are looking for Beta testers to help in the development of their 'Asterisk to Skype' product - click here to apply.  And you really do have to check out Opensky from the people at Gizmo5.  We'll be testing this soon and will report back on our findings but it looks pretty simple and with full details posted to get you started it could be a winner and the simplest way (at the moment) to dial a Skype device using a SIP account.

More for you.... NCH software has a great product that allow companies to make Skype to SIP and SIP to Skype calls easily and why not check out the SIPtoSIS gateway product at SipToSis

So it seems like there are a lot of products becoming available which will hopefully pave the way for PBX manufacturers to build this kind of gateway functionality into their systems - It would be interesting to see if any are brave enough (apart from Digium/Asterisk) to do this.

And don't forget to check out Tom Keatings blog entry regarding a SIP/Skype phone on the way later this year, click here for the entry.   Oh, how nice it would be to have a simple contacts list that when hitting a name to call, the phone can happily switch between stacks and get on with it, possible choosing the best / cheapest option as well if the contact has both a SIP and Skype account.

So will SIP and Skype ever be a happy union?  Maybe, maybe not - but it shouldn't stop them from at least being good neighbors.

Hi there, thought I'd post our latest Press release on the blog as we are obviously pleased to gain approval from a company the size of Panasonic.

Birmingham, West Midlands, UK, 27 January, 2009

Birmingham based reseller; Vocale Ltd is gaining momentum as the provider of the global standard in SIP Training and certification on receiving the official stamp of approval from Panasonic Europe.  Panasonic's Manager at the European Technical Support Centre - Paul Gorrigan says "I can fully endorse 'The SIP School' and the SSCA™ certification program as a means of filling the skills gap created in our sales channel due to the introduction of our next generation products".

Graham Francis, Managing director at Vocale Ltd said: "We're delighted to receive this endorsement from Panasonic. It proves that companies who are serious about their SIP based products understand the need to train their own technicians properly on SIP and to send a signal out to the channel to do the same"

"The demand for e-learning is going to rocket over the next few years as companies look to slash travel and subsistence costs, but also fill their training needs", he said.  Francis said that The SIP School has been updated constantly to keep up with the ongoing development of SIP since its launch in 2007 and is confident that the inclusion of a new 'Unified communications' module will tempt even more companies to join up.  "We have more 'industry giants' evaluating our SIP training and SSCA™ certification program and we will be announcing further endorsements over the coming weeks", he said.