Sabio establishes SIP Testing Capability to help organisations de-risk their SIP implementations within customer contact centres

Comprehensive interoperability testing to support deployment of key SIP contact centre components including phones, headsets, soft phones, gateways, endpoints and servers

LONDON – 12 February 2008 – Sabio, the innovative contact centre services company, believes that 2008 will be the year when solutions based on the SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) open standard start to become a commercial reality for mainstream UK contact centre operations. Sabio’s research suggests that while SIP will inevitably unlock compelling business benefits – particularly in terms of reduced overall infrastructure costs - organisations still need to be certain that their different SIP-enabled hardware and software inter-operate successfully under the SIP standard.

To address this challenge, Sabio has launched a comprehensive SIP Testing Capability at its UK Technical Centre to provide customers with the re-assurance that all their different SIP components – including phones, headsets, soft phones, gateways, endpoints, servers and operating systems will interoperate correctly. Sabio’s SIP Testing Capability will provide organisations with proof testing of their target SIP infrastructure implementations, enabling them to take full advantage of acknowledged benefits such as greater flexibility, easier integration, faster deployment and cost efficiencies.

“To date a lot of the focus on SIP has revolved around advanced functionality such as presence-based routing, but we believe that the key driver for successful and long-term SIP implementations will be the reduction in Total Cost of Ownership as organisations move from proprietary hardware to the more open SIP standard,” commented Adam Faulkner, Director, Sabio. “That’s why it’s essential for organisations to be 100 per cent confident about SIP interoperability when they first introduce SIP components into their infrastructure, and that level of confidence can only come from a close analysis of manufacturers’ support for standards and features, in-depth reviews of interoperability tests, and a rigorous lab-based testing approach.

“SIP’s simplicity ensures a low barrier of entry for device manufacturers, a wide choice of gateways and endpoints, and a healthy level of competition which works to keep prices low. However, that simplicity can also lead to inconsistencies in standards adherence, and that requires a strong focus on integration support,” he added. “At Sabio we’re confident that our SIP Testing Capability will help customers to make the right SIP implementation decisions, and ensure that they build a solid infrastructure base for future SIP-enabled projects.”

Sabio’s SIP Testing Capability provides interoperability testing for leading contact centre solutions from Avaya and Genesys with a range of SIP components such as gateways, phones, headsets etc, with industry-standard servers running Windows, Solaris, AIX and Linux operating systems, and SQL Server and Oracle databases.

With such a foundation in place, organisations can accelerate their IP transformation and start to reap the extensive business benefits of SIP-based IP solutions. By leveraging the dynamic multimedia capabilities of SIP, contact centres can work to balance the delivery of higher quality customer service while optimising agent and contact centre efficiency.