Predictions, Damned Lies and StatisticsPredictions, Damned Lies and Statistics

The migration to VoIP and SIP will continue despite the economic downturn. As a result, CSPs must include SIP trunking services in their product offerings.

This post comes from Melanie Turek, principal analyst at Frost & Sullivan:

We all know the value of making predictions, but clearly it's that time of year (see the multitude of posts below this one). Personally, I think the only safe prediction this year is that it's all about the economy... So instead of offering my own, I'll add some from my colleagues at Stratecast, a division of Frost & Sullivan that focuses on the service provider market.* The migration to VoIP and SIP will continue despite the economic downturn. As a result, CSPs [Communication Service Providers] must include SIP trunking services in their product offerings.

* Hosted voice solutions will gain attention and market share. That's good news for CSPs, but it comes with a caveat: hosted services are less sticky than their on-net counterparts, and they come with more competition.

* The landline telecom sector will consolidate further, which means more periods of confusion and disruption ahead--just when the market doesn't need it.

* The application is king--especially when it comes to judging performance. CSPs will be forced to shoulder the responsibility for all elements of service levels, and so should prepare by partnering with acceleration and optimization software providers.

* The cloud will get grounded (i.e., real). Early entrants will look at the shared and remote data center market for initial success.

* Midmarket businesses will demand managed services. MSPs, meanwhile, will need flexible, turnkey management platforms.

* Ethernet adoption will accelerate as an access technology and service interface. Pricing will decrease, and speeds will go up, up, up.

I don't agree will all of the above (and I'll blog more about those later), but the group is usually on target; here are some hits from Stratecast's list for 2008:

* IMS, Web 2.0 and multimedia services will become more prevalent as bandwidth is increasingly available. They will become the key focus of CSPs, which will hasten infrastructure build-out and the migration to IP; IMS-based voice services will proliferate, followed by pre-IMS-based data services.

* The emphasis on services bundling will be replaced by blending. Successful CSPs will blend voice, data, video and wireless services, then deliver them based on intelligent IP transport rather than service categories.

* SLAs will mature from punitive contract enforcement to proactive performance enhancers.The migration to VoIP and SIP will continue despite the economic downturn. As a result, CSPs must include SIP trunking services in their product offerings.