IP telephony set to go the distance in 2003

This is the year that enterprise IP telephony hits full stride with advanced product features and more large-scale user deployments, experts predict.

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This is the year that enterprise IP telephony hits full stride with advanced product features and more large-scale user deployments, experts predict.

Remote-office resiliency, wireless voice over IP, and expanded server platforms and protocol support are some of the items IP PBX users want - and VoIP vendors say customers can expect - in 2003.

Sales of the equipment reached approximately $1.4 billion in 2002, according to Synergy Research Group, which expects the market to reach $5.2 billion by 2006. Many VoIP companies are now on their third and fourth generations of gear, and large integrators such as IBM Global Services are fortifying offerings with packaged installation and management services for enterprise IP voice.

Support for Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is on the road map for a few IP telephony vendors in 2003. SIP is an IETF standard that will let customers use IP networks to establish sessions, instead of just phone calls, which could include voice, video or instant-messaging communications.The protocol also can be used in "presence " applications, where users list themselves as available (similar to a "buddy list") via a SIP URL. This allows users to be reached via whatever SIP-enabled technology is available: phone, videoconferencing or instant messaging. Some industry observers see the protocol as the successor to H.323, which is used widely in corporate IP telephony phones and IP PBXs today.

"SIP is the key to the maturation of the IP telephony market," says John Ridley, senior technical architect at Coca-Cola Enterprises in Atlanta, who currently uses an Avaya-based PBX phone network and TDM -based equipment from other vendors.

Ridley says the delivery of SIP by major IP telephony players is something he's been waiting on for a while. "Once the standard is there, then telephony will be like Ethernet . . . cheap components that are interoperable," he says.

Several IP PBX vendors have announced SIP-based IP PBXs, including Nortel and Mitel, while others, such as Avaya and Alcatel, have said SIP will be a part of their IP telephony stratetgy in the near future. Cisco offers a SIP-based phone, but no native support for the protocol on its CallManager  phone server.

Alcatel and Polycom are two companies that have made SIP support a priority for 2003. Alcatel expects to announce support for SIP phones for its hybrid IP/TDM OmniPCX  phone switch in the first quarter. Polycom, which had demonstrated a SIP phone at the Fall Voice on the Net conference, will have a production unit available this year. The company also is targeting a SIP-based IP teleconferencing station for release in mid-2003.

Merging wireless and IP telephony

In addition to SIP, some vendors and users will look to merge the worlds of Wi-Fi networks and IP telephony in the coming year.

"802.11 voice will be a very important application for the enterprise," says Bill Rossi, vice president and general manager of Cisco's wireless networking business unit. This marriage would seem logical, by most measures, because Cisco is the market leader in enterprise wireless LAN and VoIP.