With so much confusion surrounding today’s economy, and with people young and old scrambling to find hints of optimism anywhere they can, perhaps it is time to introduce everyone to the possibilities of VoIP, specifically, SIP Trunking. Industry analysts agree that VoIP’s continued adoption in both consumer and enterprise circles has us feeling good about where our industry is headed, but there is a truly unique opportunity to which I want to shed light.

SIP Trunking has emerged as the leading revenue-generating ‘hosted VoIP’ application utilized by the SMB enterprise. At its most simplistic level, the principle behind this technology is that once an IP PBX or traditional PBX is interoperated via a media gateway. Once you have created a secure and monitored link from an existing office phone system, you can sell inexpensive long distance to the enterprise. Specifically, SIP Trunking allows inbound and outbound calls to travel through a voice peering device (Softswitch, SBC, Gatekeeper), allowing enterprises to pay less for their long distance and local calling; it is a direct replacement of the T-1/PRI service historically sold to enterprises.

While SIP Trunking is largely perceived as a low-cost replacement technology – exactly the sort of VoIP services that have traditionally sold well – it is also a doorway to a variety of services and applications that have a notable, growing audience. Once you, as a SIP Trunking service provider, can focus on individual applications that increase productivity, work better with mobility, improve the existing PBX functions and allow for growth, there is a huge potential for VARs and service providers to generate new, recurring monthly revenue through add-ons that are of great benefit – in both cost and functionality – to the enterprise.

Also, what is very important to note is that with integration through the pre-existing SIP Trunk, there is little or no service disruption.

Leveraging all my powers of creativity - I call these services SIP Trunking Plus.

For your reading pleasure, below, I have highlighted five examples of applications that would be useful to the SMB market, and that SIP Trunking providers have begun to add to their menu of products/services.

1) Remote Worker Management: Workers not at the office - which represents 22% of workers in the US and an increasing amount overseas – can be converted to SIP end-points and treated like any other telephone on the PBX with all advanced features.

2) Web Portal and Mobile Management: Portal management for forwarding, presence, call logs, contacts, voicemail, various phone settings, etc. These services will easily extend to mobile devices and can include voicemail and unified messaging. (Most legacy PBXes do not provide Web based portals, open APIs or mobile management.)

3) Voice Mail, Presence and Unified Messaging: It is easy to redirect a call on a SIP Trunk to a hosted voicemail and unified messaging application. These applications can provide a multitude of advanced features such as voicemail to email as an attachment and voicemail to email as text, visual voicemail on a smart-phone (iPhone, Blackberry, Symbian), Web access to voicemail, and management of settings.

4) Integrated Calling Widgets: These are the first wave of productivity enhancement through ease-of-use and integration such as click-to-call, MS Outlook integration, click-to-conference, and find-me/follow me. Generally, these features are managed through Web-portals or mobile applications.

5) Hunt Groups and Advanced Call Management: Companies that have their DIDs and toll free numbers coming in on SIP Trunks can easily have those calls diverted through a call management system that can introduce an auto-attendant, hunt groups for certain blocks of numbers, ACD applications (call queuing, on-hold

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