When you've been talking about SIP Trunking as long as we have around here, it's hard to think of the technology and the adoption of it as being in the "early stages." But that is the assessment contained in a new report on the state of the SIP union.

The Webtorials report, authored primarily by Steven Taylor, is based on a survey of 300 enterprise IT professionals, who were queried about their perspective and deployment status of SIP Trunking and SBCs, session border controllers.

Among the key findings of the report was the observation that SIP Trunking is in the early stages of widespread adoption, with about one-third of the surveyed IT pros saying their companies were significantly or extensively using SIP trunks. Those who are using them are finding – as we knew they would – some pretty sizable cost savings, averaging right about 33 percent.

They should be happy, because when asked what was most important to them when it comes to SIP Trunking, 73 percent said it was cost savings. Half of the respondents also said that adding SIP-based features such as video, presence, or Unified Communications was driving their interest.

Of those respondents who weren't yet using SIP Trunking or were in the very early stages, the survey also found that among the things they saw as obstacles were a lack of SIP trunk availability at all network locations, or a lack of SIP trunks from their service providers (hint: switch to Sprint and that won't be a problem); being locked into a current telco contract; too little traffic at company branches to justify the move; or a fear that the technology is still too new.

As far as SBCs go, the survey found that even among those respondents who are using SIP Trunking or are very familiar with it, only a little over half feel they know much about the roles and importance of SBCs. The report notes, though, that for many users buying SIP Trunking services, SBCs are included and simply not something that the user needs to be concerned with. The report suggests that as SBC technology moves to the next generation, with a wider range of security and other features beyond IP address translation, that level of understanding will increase.

The report's conclusion: that there is a "nascent, and yet robust, movement toward replacing traditional connections between the enterprise and the telephony network with SIP-based trunks. Beyond delivering the expect savings that would come from replacing older functions with less expensive technologies, SIP Trunking opens up vast new capabilities, as truly Unified Communications become the norm in corporate networks."