March 2009 Archives

Here's one were really proud of ....

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.

Well, what an interesting turn of events.  Skype has announced Skype for SIP (click here to join the beta)... What can it do for you?  Ok, I 'lifted' this from the Skype site, but it lays it out neatly...

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
  

Tom Keating wrote about a solution that allows outbound calls to the Skype community here, and this can be built on to make outgoing calls if PBX / Phone manufacturers can build the logic into their own products (more on this later as I'm going to try something out in the lab 1st - maybe with a Mitel PBX and the 3CX software based PBX)..

Now, a couple of things...

Firstly, this service will only support G.729 to start with?  Why not G.711 at least? and what about HD Audio? - please let this be the SIP Trunking service that 'kick starts' HD across the corporate trunking world.

Secondly, as I haven't tested it yet it will be interesting to look at how the SIP trunking connection from Skype works, what features it support and I'm hopeful it will be good as they have 'good intentions' re: working towards the SIP Connect recommendation from the SIP forum.

And... if you want to read other peopls comments on this, check out this great thread at Gigaom

So, it's very early days here but all of a sudden the SIP trunking market has just gained 'one heck' of a player.

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.