UC
About two years ago Avaya made a splash when it introduced Aura Session Management Edition. The concept was simple – what if you could take advantage of the benefits of SIP trunking, SIP-based applications, unified dial-plans/call routing, and presence aggregation and federation without having to replace legacy infrastructure or individually interconnect each UC application? Session management essentially creates a layer above existing UC applications giving IT architects a means to unify legacy systems to take advanate of SIP-based services, without the need for rip-and-replace of existing telephony systems. Since then, other vendors have joined the fray including Cisco with its Unified Communications Manager – Session Management Edition, and session management capabilities found within SIP session border controllers from vendors such as Acme Packet. During our latest round of research we gathered data on SIP session management plans from over 200 participating organizations. Forty-six percent of companies are evaluating SIP session management, while 25% say they are planning to deploy it in the next year. Adopters are primarily large firms with a mix of legacy TDM and VOIP or who operate a myriad of disparate systems gathered via acquisition over the years. For these organizations SIP session management offers a way to take advantage of UC and SIP trunking without the need to first for a massive capital investment to replace their legacy TDM infrastructure. Often a key driver for session management is the desire for presence federation between legacy systems and Microsoft Office Communications Server. Those responsible for telecom architecture should evaluate SIP session management for their organization, especially if they are operating a large, legacy TDM infrastructure with limited plans to transition to IP, but who have a desire to take advantage of SIP trunking and presence federation.
