Eric Burger, deputy CTO at BEA (News - Alert) Systems, Inc. has been elected the chairman of the SIP Forum Board of Directors.

Announcing the recent election, the SIP Forum also informed the selection of IP communications industry consultant and analyst, Marc Robins (News - Alert), as the Forum’s new managing director. In addition, the two new executives joining the Forum’s Board of Directors are Mark Enstrom, product manager at BroadSoft, Inc. and Richard Shockey, director of technical Staff at NeuStar, Inc.

The SIP Forum (News - Alert) is an IP communications industry association that engages in numerous activities that advance and promote SIP technology, such as the development of industry recommendations, the SIPit (News - Alert) interoperability and testing events, special interoperability workshops, and general promotion of SIP in the industry.

Noting that over the last ten years the SIP industry has grown substantially with companies such as BEA Systems and a sizeable ecosystem of NEPs, SIs and ISVs participating in interoperability tests globally, Dr. Burger said in a statement, “SIP interoperability is critical to the success of next-generation communications.”

He also believed that the technical initiatives they are spearheading at the SIP Forum aim to promote SIP interoperability to benefit both service providers and the corporate network.

Robins said that he look forward to working with the Board of Directors on making the SIP Forum an essential industry organization and serving the Forum membership through “a variety of new marketing, technical, educational and communications programs.”

“BroadSoft made an early commitment to the SIP Forum and the organization’s goal of establishing SIPconnect as the industry standard for interoperability between leading service providers and IP PBXs,” stated Mark Enstrom.

He also added that he is looking forward to help promote SIPconnect as the de facto standard for SIP Trunking.

“With SIP now deploying in telecommunications networks worldwide, I look forward to working the Board to continue innovative programs such as SIPconnect and SIPconnect Compliant to extend the benefits of SIP end to end in both enterprise and service provider markets,” added Richard Shockey.

Other than recent appointments, the other members of the Board of Directors include Chris Gatch, CTO at Cbeyond; Steven J. Johnson, CEO at Ingate Systems; David Oran, Fellow at Cisco (News - Alert) Systems; Anwar Siddiqui, Member, CTO Office at Avaya; and Robert Sparks, vice president of research and development at Estacado Systems.

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Anshu Shrivastava is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To see more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

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