The desktop phone as we know it is here to stay.

From the exhibit hall to the panel discussions and sessions, one of the key themes of this year’s VoiceCon San Francisco was that the desk phone isn’t dead, and all signs point to the desktop phone sticking around for a long, long time. And at the center of that discussion was snom, which was at VoiceCon SF showcasing its latest and greatest intelligent SIP endpoints, including the snom 870 touch-screen desktop phone and the MeetingPoint VoIP conference phone.

“At the end of the day, I think everyone believes physical telephones are here to stay,” said Mike Storella, snom’s director of business development for the Americas.

So why the turnaround, when just last year there were certain companies – which shall remain nameless – saying the desktop phone is dead and it’s an all-software game now?

“They’ve backed off,” Storella said, adding that with the continued proliferation of VoIP and the ability to work both from the office and from home, users want consistency, meaning they want phones at home that offer the same features and functions they get at the office. In many cases, a soft phone just isn’t going to cut it. Users want something tangible they can hold in their hands when making or receiving a call.

Plus, most modern phones have a lifespan of five to seven years, and businesses aren’t willing or able to throw away that investment. Add to the mix the ability to update VoIP phones with new software and firmware, and that can extend the life of a phone immeasurably.

These discussions around the staying power of desktop phones follow on the heels of a recent video interview featuring snom founder and CEO Christian Stredicke discussing the future of SIP-based IP desktop phones.

On the VoiceCon show floor, the staying power of the desktop phone was evident at the snom booth, which had a steady stream of traffic throughout the conference. It was also evident during Storella’s appearance on an afternoon panel discussion called “Hardphones, Softphones & Next-Gen Systems.”

Another hot topic of this year’s VoiceCon San Francisco, Storella said, was that the discussion around unified communications become more focused. In past years, UC was a nice to have with no clear definition. That’s starting to change.

“UC is getting more and more defined as to what it is,” Storella said, noting that vendors and end-users are starting to understand the real value of adding communications capabilities into a various applications to improve business processes.

The further defining of UC made VoiceCon the perfect platform for snom to unveil its partnership with ESTOS. The snom and ESTOS partnership eases the deployment of Microsoft TAPI-enabled business applications, like unified communications and CTI solutions. The partnership allows ESTOS’ ECSTA for snom middleware to convert snom’s Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) interface protocol to the Microsoft TAPI standard. ESTOS ECSTA for snom, when used with ESTOS ProCall solutions, allows both companies to deliver unified communications and CTI functionality to medium-sized businesses and service providers.

The new ESTOS ECSTA for snom middleware enables snom’s 3XX Series and 8XX Series intelligent VoIP telephones to support additional call center, CTI and unified communications applications in both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows operating system environments.

ESTOS ECSTA for snom also enables snom phones to take advantage of several telephony functions through TAPI-enabled applications. Those functions include making, answering, holding and retrieving calls; consultation calls; single-step transfers; alternating calls; setting and receiving forwarding status; and setting and receiving do not disturb status.