Voice Management Provider Highlights Company's Successes in 2009

With the economic pressures of 2009, including budget cuts and staff reductions felt in businesses across the world, Managed Service Providers or “MSPs” gained attention from businesses looking for a service offering that effectively managed the depth and breadth of enterprise communications networks.

 

“MSPs can often deliver converged network management more cost efficiently than the IT department can do so itself—particularly if the IT group is working with less staff and resources,” an official with an Anaheim, Calif.-based provider of end-to-end monitoring and management solutions for converged telecommunications and IT infrastructures, told TMCnet in an interview.

 

Throughout 2009, Whitney said the company grew successfully as MSPs embraced Tone’s ReliaTel and Streamline management solution to deliver the capabilities required to manage almost any technology mix across the TDM and IP Telephony domains.

 

To find out more about the company’s ReliaTel solution and their success over the last year, I took some time to chat with Tracey Whitney, director of marketing at Tone Software (News - Alert).

 

 

 

 

 

The economic pressures of 2009 have had noticeable impact in the market this past year. First, enterprise IT organizations that have suffered budget cuts and staff reductions have turned to Managed Service Providers “MSPs” as an option to remotely manage their converging enterprise communications networks. MSPs can often deliver converged network management more cost efficiently than the IT department can do so itself—particularly if the IT group is working with less staff and resources. 

 

This trend provides MSPs with greater opportunities, if they have the capabilities to deliver a service offering that effectively manages the depth and breadth of these enterprise communications networks.

 

The impact to Tone Software’s business has been an increased interest in – and appreciation for - our ReliaTel-Streamline solution that fully manages multi-vendor TDM, VoIP, and IP Telephony environments regardless of the technology mix. As providers expand their remote management service offerings to meet the demands of more diverse client environments, they recognize the tremendous value and cost effectiveness of a solution that delivers end-to-end visibility and management across their entire client base.

 

 

 

 

A strategic highlight for Tone in 2009 was the acquisition of the Streamline VoIP QoS Analytics and Management solution. The Streamline VoIP QoS solution enables enterprises and managed service providers to perform in-depth IP voice quality of service analysis and management, including real-time capture of session statistics on every call and real-time calculation of MOS for every call. Streamline further enables enterprises and managed service providers to conduct VoIP pre-network assessments to determine the IP network’s readiness for VoIP traffic – an increasingly important step in ensuring the success of VoIP deployments. 

 

Together with TONE’s ReliaTel Management software, the two technologies form a solution suite that seamlessly provides in-depth management of faults, performance, QoS, traffic, and network capacity for multi-platform, IP-enabled voice and data environments that support mobility, collaboration and unified communications.

 

 

 

 

2009 has been a very progressive year for Tone as a company, and for the ReliaTel – Streamline technology suite. As converged communications continues to evolve, MSPs are increasingly searching for cost effective ways to expand their services offerings to manage a wider range of convergence technologies from a variety of manufacturers—while still maintaining or even improving their profit margins. MSPs have embraced Tone's ReliaTel and Streamline management solution because it delivers the capabilities MSPs require to manage almost any technology mix across the TDM and IP Telephony domains—without the need to purchase multiple proprietary tools or add costly additional staff. Using ReliaTel-Streamline, MSPs can provide comprehensive convergence management services to enterprises, without incurring huge increases in overhead costs that drag down their profitability. 

 

 

 

We’re seeing cautious optimism, and businesses are making investments for the future – particularly in the areas of converged communications where there is a solid ROI to be realized. Advanced convergence technologies such as workforce mobility, collaboration, and unified communications improve business processes, increase staff productivity, and reduce business expenses, so these technologies have remained on the IT agenda despite the economic downturn. 

 

As these initiatives become reality, it becomes a necessity to ensure the payback from these investments – and ReliaTel-Streamline is a management solution specifically designed to ensure converged communications service levels, voice quality, and reliability – all of which helps guarantee the expected ROI.

 

 

 

 

Tone will be introducing innovative new ReliaTel – Streamline capabilities designed specifically to help voice network operations teams better understand and mitigate quality and service affecting issues within their converged voice networks. MSPs will find the new capabilities particularly valuable as each of their clients’ converged voice networks grow in size and diversity, and as they roll out more in-depth convergence management services across their entire client base. 

 

We’re very excited about the great strides we’re taking to continually increase the value of our ReliaTel-Streamline technology for both managed service providers and enterprises alike, and we’ll be working closely with these key players to ensure our technology addresses their most pressing problems in their evolving communications environments.