Aricent's SIP Philosophy
At Aricent, we completely understand the dynamics of the
SIP industry. We conceptualize and deliver the software products,
optimally meeting current and future industry demands, thus
maximizing customer value.
Aricent also understands that for an evolving protocol, multi-vendor
interoperability is the key. Aricent has been participating in
all industry bake- offs and has been among the very few vendors
to take the SIP product to advanced bake-offs.
SIP in 1998-2000
When SIP was first introduced as a new protocol, Aricent was quick to realize its potential as the de-facto standard
for IP signaling. Through active participation in various
standards bodies, such as the Chairperson in the SIP Forum
in Asia, the Technical Advisory Council (TAC) position in
the International Softswitch Consortium, the Chairman of the
International Softswitch Consortium in the SIP Working Group,
Members of SIPPING, 3GPP, we at Aricent have been involved in
defining the SIP standard.
As SIP gained momentum in the industry, several organizations
focused purely on SIP-based futuristic services. We, however,
concentrated on providing a core infrastructure element to
our customers because we understood the need to keep track
of ever-evolving standards. We created a niche for ourselves
in the SIP space by offering our customers twin advantages
of cost savings and faster time-to-market.
SIP in 2001-2002
In 2001, as the telecom industry passed through a recession,
new product development at most telecom organizations was
put on hold. Aricent, however, continued its investment
in SIP and ramped up its development team to 80 members from
the 50 members it began with. Aricent understood that with reduced
R&D budgets, customers needed to concentrate more on their
core competencies and develop applications. Aricent introduced
higher value offerings in this period to further reduce development
costs and lessen deployment time for its customers. Such an
offering was the SIP UA Toolkit that hid the stack level APIs
and exposed only the higher-level APIs to clients.
During this difficult period, there was also a shift in the
industry outlook. More and more players started looking for
a solution that would save costs and increase revenues for
the service providers. Delivering what was "Now" rather than
concentrating on "futuristic services" became the mantra.
Riding on this trend, Aricent introduced the SIP Server Framework
with inbuilt Proxy, Registrar, and the Redirect server and
positioned this as an enabler for core infrastructure element,
reducing the CAPEX/OPEX for the service providers.
SIP Moving Ahead
SIP is further strengthening itself as the standard for IP
signaling. Aricent envisions that in the future,
networks will become a commodity. Customers would want value-added
services irrespective of the access network they are in and
the kind of services they are accessing. SIP will become the
ubiquitous protocol because it facilitates mobility across
different access networks, such as 802.11, 3G, and fixed networks.
The recent 3GPP recommendation to introduce SIP as the signaling
standard for 3G is in line with Aricent's vision for SIP.
Adoption of SIP is undergoing a paradigm shift at this stage.
In the beginning, SIP was adopted only by the competitive
carriers. Moving ahead, we see several incumbent carriers
providing SIP-based services. To reduce the churn rate, service
providers will need to constantly introduce innovative services.
With its simple architecture, SIP will easily facilitate application
development for service providers.
Initially, SIP was adopted in Class 4 networks, mostly as
another transport protocol. This did not utilize the tremendous
potential SIP had in providing value-added applications. Aricent
envisions an increasing number of Class 5 implementations
of SIP by operators targeting the enterprise segment with
hosted PBX becoming one of the major immediate revenue generators.
To meet these future market demands, Aricent with its in-built
Call State Control Function (CSCF) in its SIP Server has positioned
the solution to 3G networks. Aricent has also introduced B2BUA
features in the Server to position the solution as a rapid
application development framework. Aricent has also introduced
Centrex features in its solution such that Aricent's SIP Server
Framework (SIP-SF) can be deployed as a ready-to-run solution
at the access network of the service providers.
Aricent's is today the leader in SIP software solutions
with more than 150 customers. Aricent's SIP Server is one of the
most widely deployed solutions in different scenarios, such
as End User Equipment, Gateways, Switches, PBXs, Conferencing
Servers, and Media Servers. Moving ahead, we are committed
to innovate and use SIP to best suit industry needs.
Last updated :
October 17, 2006
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