|
WiMAXtoday.tmcnet.com Now Live! | ITEXPO West begins in:
Register Now!
|
|
Applications Featured Articles
A major challenge facing companies moving to VoIP
 and adopting converged communications is optimizing their investment in making the transition. Clarus Systems (News - Alert) Inc., a provider of integrated management and testing solutions for IP Communication deployments, upgrades and transformations, believes its ClarusIPC 2.3 can play a pivotal role in helping organizations optimize their VoIP technology investment.
Clarus said its management suite of automated VoIP testing applications can help organizations dramatically reduce time and costs associated with all aspects of converged communications strategies, from deployment to quality of service (QoS
) and ongoing operations.According to a recent report from Aberdeen (News - Alert) Group titled Network Transformations: Managing Transitions for Growth, published in May 2007, 61% of enterprises surveyed are planning a transition to an IP-enabled network in the next two years and Best-in-Class (BIC) performers are using strategies to complete that transition faster with less downtime.
“Enterprises that are making a significant investment in technologies that support Unified Communications (News - Alert) must leverage configuration analysis techniques and validate that environments are configured as designed,” said Richard Whitehead, CTO, Clarus Systems Inc., in a statement. “Otherwise, there is no room for optimizing or transforming their VoIP network and the investment is simply a wasted and grossly underutilized effort.”
Aberdeen Group Research Director Joe Basili said in a statement, “To achieve Best-in-Class performance, enterprises must adopt an approach that manages the entire lifecycle from assessment of the existing network infrastructure, capacity testing, provisioning of new carrier services, deployment of hardware, updating of software, QoS monitoring, troubleshooting and optimization, to disposition of retired equipment and services that will no longer be used.”
Clarus Systems premier application, ClarusIPC, is leveraged by enterprises, systems integrators and managed service providers to support the lifecycle of Cisco Unified Communications Manager, from deployment through ongoing operations. ClarusIPC is scalable and offers remote certification, configuration analysis, help desk information portal, and troubleshooting.
The Aberdeen report identifies further how BIC organizations can benefit from implementing an integrated management and testing solution: “Enterprises utilize a variety of hardware and they deploy different types of operating systems on their networks. The ability to have full visibility into the inventory at every stage of the network transition process is critical to keeping operating costs under control. 100% of BIC enterprise reported that they completed their network transition on time compared to 21% of laggards.”
In one example of a BIC enterprise benefiting from these monitoring tools, MSN Communications, one of the Rocky Mountain Region’s largest and most experienced network integrators, measured the direct cost savings of automating acceptance testing versus the extensive manual testing. On a thousand phone installation, ClarusIPC can save tens of thousands of minutes (or more than 150 hours) by automating standard testing criteria. At a $150 per hour billable rate, this translates into a potential savings of $20,000 in labor time due to the use of ClarusIPC.
“We were astonished to learn from the Aberdeen study that only 36 percent of enterprise organizations with best-in-class solutions have the ability to monitor voice quality – that is where the upcoming release of ClarusIPC can fill the void and address the demand head on,” added Whitehead. “Our lifecycle approach addresses all phases of a network transition including deployment – plan, design, implement – and operations – operate, troubleshoot, optimize. Forward-thinking enterprises that adopt this comprehensive approach are positioned for best-in-class performance.”
Spencer Chin is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To see more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.
Don't forget to check out TMCnet’s White Paper Library, which provides a selection of in-depth information on relevant topics affecting the IP Communications industry. The library offers white papers, case studies and other documents which are free to registered users.
|
