As more and more organizations transition to next generation communication networks, they are quickly finding out that today’s networks are becoming more and more complex. Today’s UC networks are built off of a multi-vendor architecture and enables multimodal communications that can be accessed from anywhere, corporate LAN, home network, mobile network or even public WiFi.
Category Archives: Convergence Technologies
How to Compare and Select a UC Managed Service Provider
The shift from traditional telephony platforms to Unified Communications (UC) has put organizations in more of a consumption model, which is causing a shift in how UC is supported. The concept of a call server or PBX is really going away, as all the functions of a UC environment – voice, video and collaboration – are more and more distributed. This trend causes server monitoring and availability to be de-emphasized.
The Importance of Communications and Operational Continuity
As the effects of natural disasters are felt all over the world, I can’t help but reflect on the importance of Communications especially during times of disaster. Business Continuity requires visibility, availability, reliability and redundancy to ensure the entire organization is kept well informed during emergencies. Are remote locations healthy and available or are services potentially degrading to prevent remote employees from being productive? When the business must reprioritize functions between different geographic territories, are the communications networks successful in handling the increased workload for service quality and throughput?
The Impact of Microsoft Teams to the Unified Communications Market
Do we need yet another communications platform in the seemingly crowded Enterprise Communications space? Microsoft has not only answered this question with a resounding YES but they have rapidly become a leader in the Enterprise Unified Communications (UC) space according to Gartner. Analysts cite Microsoft as a leader in the Unified Communications space, along with Cisco and Avaya. Among the key strengths identified by Gartner’s study are adoption rates for enterprises ranging from small to large organizations, integration with Skype, and integration with enterprise business processes and applications.
The Need for ReliaTel Dashboards
We recently announced key ReliaTel features and introduced a new Dashboard interface that benefits both management and operations.
Enterprise Communications Trends
As begin a new year, I can’t help but reflect on the contrasting differences. The proliferation of Unified Communications, Videoconference, Telepresence, Cloud and Managed Services within the enterprise domain sets up continuous growth through quantifiable ROIs and expansion towards the SMB space.
The Importance of UC Monitoring and Management to Organizations
How important is UC monitoring and management to organizations? According to a Gartner study, real-time performance is second only to ensuring compatibility and interoperability of the UC vendor technologies. The Gartner study spanning 8 countries, over a 100 organizations per country with a minimum of 1000 employees per organization outlines the key challenges when adopting UC technologies into the data center. Gartner’s findings quantify the end-user importance of real-time visibility into the UC environment.
Automation a Key Step Towards Successful UC Operations
My previous post titled “Why is MOS so easily dismissed?” summarized anecdotal findings from real-world experiences of organizations. This week, I will continue on the same theme of real-world experiences gathered from operational groups throughout the world.
Why is MOS so easily dismissed?
If the mere mention of MOS (Mean Opinion Score) conjures up some high level sales terminology that’s meant to gloss over the details and provides little impact to troubleshooting VoIP QoS, then don’t worry because you are not alone. Over the past few years, I’ve noticed a growing trend amongst our technology peers who have similar feelings when discussing MOS as a factor of visibility to VoIP networks. Most anecdotal responses to my queries of dismissal end in “…I can’t fix my network using MOS.” So I ponder the dismissal; Has the audience expertise surpassed the oversimplified value of MOS? Has MOS outgrown it’s value in how we operate our VoIP networks? or is there something more subtle creating the perception of dismissal?
Convergence Community Welcome
Welcome to Tone’s Convergence Community. This blog focuses on discussions of convergence and communications technologies and methodologies.