Michael Crown

Florida

SIP Phone Tycoon

I find this analysis baffling. If SIP is more expensive to develop and implement, how does the writer explain the recent proliferation of sub-$100 SIP devices and why they don't say Cisco on them? If the big players are the net beneficiaries, why have they been so slow to embrace SIP? Why are the vast majority of the new consumer VoIP services using SIP? Here's the real "Dirty Little Secret": The big established telecom players sell proprietary systems, and have little incentive to do more than pay lip service to SIP. I have heard every excuse there is; "It's too complicated", "It's not really a standard", "It doesn't support the features people want". You name it, I've heard it. Meanwhile, SIP, Asterisk and other open standards have allowed a number of small upstart companies to focus on creating best-of-breed components, and these components are being used by a legion of clever integrators to engineer world class systems that do more for less. I've seen this dynamic many times in the past and on every occasion it marked a changing of the guard. Big fish will always eat little fish, but SIP has created an incentive to enter the market, not a barrier. Microsoft might eventually use it's muscle to try and squeeze others out, but two things lead me to believe it won't happen; First, MS Messenger is a welcome but largely irrelevent player in the emerging telecom landscape. Their influence over the standard is overestimated. And second, their place at the table is by no means secure. If they overplay their hand, they may find they are holding Aces and Eights.