It’s a stealth issue for a few reasons: For one thing, SIP Trunks involve the carriers, and it’s my observation that too often, we like to keep the carriers as far off in the periphery of our discussions as we can. Maybe it comes from the old Bell System days when the “demarc” was a legal concept as well as a bright line dividing which individuals ought to get fingers pointed at them when troubles crop up in an end user’s system. Or maybe it’s just that the two worlds, carrier and enterprise, tend to view each other with (often-justified) suspicion that breeds less than perfect understanding.

Whatever the reason, SIP Trunks haven’t gotten as much attention as some of these “bigger” issues, but we’re seeing an explosion of interest in the topic nevertheless. Our breakout session on SIP Trunking drew the largest crowd of any breakout at VoiceCon, and this week’s VoiceCon Webinar on SIP Trunking (register here) is already our biggest webinar in more than a year, with a few more days of registration to go. Clearly, something’s going on here.

Social networking is going to be an ever-bigger part of future VoiceCons, both as a subject of discussion and as a way that we interact with our attendees—and with our audience that isn’t on site. The show was huge on Twitter during the week of the event; at one point we were the fifth-highest “Trending Topic;” and the volume of traffic into NoJitter.com from Twitter, though still small relative to other sources, has grown steadily since the first of the year, with of course a big jump during VoiceCon.

Social networking and Twitter are a piece of the answer, for our organization and for enterprise communications generally. But there are other pieces: When it comes to enterprise communications, mobility is a huge element of the equation that social networking overlaps with but does not fully encompass. The same goes for communications enabled business processes (CEBP), which is where I think the real payoff (and momentum) are right now.

While we are on the subject, maximizing leverage by pursuing “no commitment’ deals sounds great, but in practice decent pricing in telecom requires a commitment of one kind of another. Those who think they got something by avoiding a minimum annual or term commitment often find that they have minimum commitments for each and every circuit – which is much more onerous.

Negotiating network services agreements is never easy, but the need to control risk and improve deal economics makes that task even harder. In short, there is no room for error. Enterprises that avoid the mistakes described stand a much better chance of conserving their leverage and getting the deal they need to meet the challenges of the coming years.

The pressure to reduce telecom costs has rarely been higher than in the current business environment. Telecom managers can leave no stone unturned in their quest to minimize network costs, but at the same time are seldom in a position to suggest reduced levels of service, availability and coverage. Meeting the challenge of reducing costs while avoiding degraded service levels is the Holy Grail of network management in 2009.

But fortunately it is easier to find than the legendary chalice. Shrewd telecom managers are realizing cost savings in multiple ways, and addressing far more than the normal low hanging fruit. Here are some ideas.