The two tracks of Speakup

2018 will herald the end of the old-fashioned ISDN connection. For companies that have not yet switched to telecommunications via IP, or VoIP, this is the perfect moment. Part of Speakup's focus is therefore on the 'old school' SIP trunks, the protocol for VoIP connections. 'The alternative to ISDN has been calling via IP for years,' says Ian Kennedy. 'We have been doing this for 14 years with SIP trunks. We have become big with it and now we will pay attention to it again. The big issue is always that every telephone exchange has its own 'dialect'. Previously, we translated the dialect itself into the standard SIP, the defined standard 'language'. Then we had to certify separately at each central unit. What we are doing now is purchasing the technology, certified and all, to integrate it into our network. This way we can more easily say to every customer that it does not matter which telephone exchange they are connected to. We only have to ask which control center it is and to enable a check mark, and they can communicate with the Speakup network. ' Identification and authorization The term Unified Communications says it all: the market requires ever more integration of all types of communication tools. This sometimes yields interesting issues, which Speakup also deals with. 'Within the telecom you have a unique identifier, a telephone number. The same applies to e-mail. With those unique identifiers you know that you can reach a person. But nowadays you can log in to third-party products in various ways. Everyone has accounts from Facebook, Google and Microsoft. Sometimes they are asked to use them to log on to business platforms. Often one finds that difficult. Do you really want an employee to log in with his private account on a business network with sensitive information? ' "And what if an employee leaves a company? Often it is not even clear to which systems a person has access, and through which accounts. That makes it difficult to deprive him of access or transfer contacts. What we are doing at Speakup is that we ourselves can function as an identifier. The solution that we are developing must be able to integrate with other applications through APIs and at the same time be able to say which functions are accessible to which employees. In this we want to think along with the user to design the communication system in an ideal way for them. That is really custom work, so we try to make the platform as generic as possible and give the user the building blocks they need to set up a system according to their own wishes. Two tracks Speakup  will therefore implement a policy in 2018 that runs on two tracks: SIP trunks on the one hand and identification and authorization via API. 'With that two-track policy we actually say to customers: we have been doing this for 14 years, we are specialists in it. But beware: the market is changing, employees are changing, people want to be otherwise accessible. How do you want to be accessible as a company? Track 1 is an entry point, track 2 is about to sit down with the entrepreneur and think about what kind of ways he wants to communicate. '