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.
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