The key to VoIP management

Frank van der Poll manages the EMEA and APAC Sales and Services Operations for Viola Networks from EMEA/APAC Headquarters in London. Frank has over 20 years experience in the telecommunications and data communications industry. Most recently, he served as an independent consultant for several high tech companies including Lucent Technologies and One2Connect. Previously, he served as Vice President Europe for Gandalf Technologies, a Canadian Public Data Communication Company.

CXO. What are the key benefits of Viola’s VoIP management solution?
FvdP. Viola is a software supplier to system integrators, service providers and enterprise customers. Our principle benefits for these customers are twofold. The first is risk reduction. Our software allows them to preview the performance of their VoIP systems before they are put into production and thereby eliminate unforeseen problems with their service delivery systems. The second benefit is to enhance their operational efficiency.

We have developed a solution that detects degradation in VoIP quality before the end-users experience it and allows their support staff to proactively eliminate these problems with automated diagnostic techniques to pinpoint the root cause. In both cases, the focus is on being proactive versus reactive which is usually a safer strategy than waiting for problems to arise and one that is always less expensive.

CXO. What new challenges are associated with provisioning VoIP services?
FvdP. Implementing voice communications on a transport system designed for data applications is inherently risky. Analysts tell us that 85 percent of router-based networks are simply not ready to support IP telephony. That’s because the requirements for producing toll-quality calls are so fundamentally different than they are for data.

For example, a web page that arrives one or two seconds later than normal will be tolerated by the user because there is no data loss and their experience is relatively unaffected. In the voice world this level of delay would be intolerable. Delays longer than 150 milliseconds begin to reduce the quality of the call, turning a crisp and clean phone conversation into something that resembles a cellular phone with poor coverage. Voice packets are not retransmitted like they are in the data world, so when they are lost, delayed or arrive out of sequence, the quality of the call suffers and users complain.

This can all be avoided by conducting a pre-deployment VoIP assessment of the network and continuously monitoring the environment to detect changes in service quality resulting from higher call volume, data traffic spikes or unpredictable equipment failures. That’s where we add value. Viola Networks provides the assessment, monitoring and diagnostic tools used to manage the unique requirements of VoIP communications.

CXO. Which do you think is more important – the potential for reducing operations cost through convergence, or the ability to provide additional multimedia/mobility features?
FvdP. Cost reduction and applications enablement are really the dual benefits of a successful VoIP deployment. That being said, most of our customers justify the move to
VoIP based on reducing the cost of running parallel voice and data networks in order to pave the way for future real-time applications. So it’s imperative that their VoIP solutions offer a genuine return on investment in the short term. That’s why we have focused on providing efficiency improvements. If our customers can save money by converging their voice and data facilities and streamline the support process at the same time, it’s a guaranteed win. It’s very achievable, but requires the IT organisation or service provider to augment their existing service level management regimen with centralised visibility and control over the newly added voice services.

In the voice world, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So it’s essential that the VoIP management system predict the quality of VoIP calls that can be maintained as the volume of calls increase. It must identify deviations in call quality long before service degradation turns into a wide-scale service outage. Finally, the management system must help the support team to rapidly locate the origin of the problem with intelligent tools that collect and present diagnostic data in a highly efficient manner. The end game is to have fewer trouble calls while accelerating the resolution of unavoidable problems.

CXO. What differentiates Viola’s product from other suppliers of VoIP management software?
FvdP. Viola’s NetAlly software has the unique ability to perform on-demand simulations of VoIP calls between any two end-points on the network to assess call quality or troubleshoot a network path under very controlled conditions. At the same time, the software will automatically gather information about actual calls held between real users to understand more about the user experience. Finally, information about the status, usage and configuration of the switches and routers used in the communications path is collected to evaluate the health of the network transport and its impact on call quality. Together, these multiple data sources are brought together in a central management console to provide a consolidated view of service levels and the infrastructure that delivered them. Viola Networks developed this approach and its breakthrough technology to enable a more efficient and effective VoIP management capability than has previously existed.

A real world example will help to clarify this point. Imagine that voice connections used by stock brokers executing high-value equity trades are found to have poor quality levels and this has triggered an alarm on the central VoIP management system. In order to reproduce this problem, the calls must be simulated under the same network traffic conditions that existed when the call quality degradation occurred. A diagnostic test procedure can be scheduled to run after the market is closed and while the network is available for troubleshooting. The information gathered from the IP-PBX identifies the affected users while data collected from the network equipment is used to recreate the conditions at the time of the problem. Once the appropriate service levels have been restored, user call quality can be continuously monitored and alerts can be established to notify the support team at the first sign of a recurrence of the problem.

Technically, this is referred to as the integration of ‘active testing’ and ‘passive monitoring’. It involves the use of active agents for performing the voice call simulations and passive agents for monitoring the health of the infrastructure. Together, these complementary technologies produce a centralised and holistic view of the voice environment that allows the support team to rapidly correlate information and execute a rapid response to service level problems.

CXO. What do you feel are the key factors in a successful VoIP deployment?
FvdP. Regardless of whether VoIP services are delivered by an internal IT group or by an external service provider, we feel it is critical to maintain quality control at each stage of the service delivery process, from pre-deployment to full production. To that end, Viola has defined a four-stage VoIP management lifecycle: preliminary
assessment, service deployment, operational management and resource optimisation.

The preliminary assessment stage is all about benchmarking service levels for voice communications prior to deployment. We believe the marketplace has begun to recognize the importance of pre-deployment testing and are now incorporating this function into their project plans. During the service deployment stage, this benchmarking data can be used to track the progress of the VoIP deployment and immediately correct any service level deviations. When the operational management stage begins, the support group must continuously measure call quality, detect service degradation and quickly eliminate service-level problems. As the final stage, we help our customers to focus on resource optimisation for delivering voice services. This requires historical monitoring and analysis of service level trends to determine the optimum use of their resources – both people and technology. We enable all four of these stages using intelligent software agents that are centrally controlled by automated diagnostic systems.

CXO. The deployment of aVoIP telephony system on a corporate IP network can lead to a better telephone service at a fraction of the cost of a traditional PBX. How can Viola convince customers to switch to a VoIP Network?
FvdP. The economic benefits of VoIP are compelling and provide plenty of motivation for customers who are considering a VoIP network. The cost savings can be realised in many ways depending on the nature of the customer’s business and take the form of capital and expense reductions along with improvements to worker productivity. First and foremost, the cost of phone calls themselves is much lower, especially due to savings in long distance tolls. For internal calls, consider the substantial carrier cost savings when parallel voice and data networks are converged into a single cost-effective infrastructure. Then there are the equipment cost savings as IP-PBX hardware can be acquired and maintained for a much lower capital outlay and ongoing administrative expense than their older TDM-based counterparts. Finally there are productivity gains that come from a better use of technical support resources to deliver the service and for end-users who benefit from the use of real-time and collaborative applications to help them do their jobs more efficiently.

Our role as a supplier of management solutions is to make sure they don’t give those savings back when it is time to deploy and operate a VoIP production environment. A principle unplanned expense associated with VoIP deployment is the cost of downtime.

The impact on users with poor telephony service can be severe and the support cost will escalate when call quality problems are intermittent and elusive. A successful VoIP deployment requires a toolset capable of detecting and correcting those problems promptly and permanently. In terms of capital expense savings, delivering a quality VoIP service can fall victim to the old adage of ‘throwing bandwidth at the problem’, but that defeats a principle goal of convergence – reducing the network carrier costs. Management tools must also provide accurate information on usage and service level trends so that future demand can be met with the most efficient use of network resources.

Ultimately, it’s a very simple formula. Substantial cost savings from converged voice and data services can be realised without risk by using the right management tools to design and deliver them. The tools are available and Viola provides them.

CXO. How long do you think it will take before VoIP truly penetrates mainstream telephony and replaces regular phone services?
FvdP. VoIP services are part of an emerging set of multimedia communications capabilities whose features and services go far beyond traditional telephony. When voice and data are tightly integrated at the application level, VoIP will become a means to an end as opposed to an end unto itself. This new generation of real-time applications will have a profound impact on the workflow and productivity of the organisation.

Unified messaging, presence, multimedia teleconferencing and IPTV represent the evolution of VoIP as an enabling technology for more than ordinary telephone calls. Once IP telephony has proven itself as a utility that reduces cost and expands the reach of voice communications, organisations will look to enhance this service with more real-time collaborative applications. However, this stage of market-place adoption and expansion will not happen until VoIP proves itself as a reliable standalone service.

CXO. What would you say are the general problems facing deployment to service providers of VoIP networks in the region?
FvdP. There is still a general perception that IP telephony is not ready for prime time, that it’s not capable of delivering the same quality and consistency of services offered by voice communications based on traditional TDM technology.

We at Viola know that this is simply not the case. It’s the management tools that have been lagging, not the VoIP technology itself. That’s why we developed our NetAlly solution – to elevate the sophistication of VoIP management systems so that organisations can assure the service quality of VoIP communications will meet their internal SLA targets as well as their end-user expectations.

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