Small businesses which have plunged into the VoIP services industry are quickly realizing that there are two things that eat up profitability more than anything else: equipment and maintenance.

While equipment costs continue to fall as the market heats up, on-site maintenance is likely to increase, due to labor costs and the simple expense of sending a truck out for basic monitoring and upgrades.

So it’s no surprise that service providers large and small are looking to cut the number of truck rolls as much as possible, and a vibrant vendor community is shoring up to help.

One firm, Packet Island Inc., of Santa Clara, Calif., has devised what it terms a VoIP LifeCycle Management solution. Called PacketSmart, the system accumulates network data into a central location where it can be accessed by service providers and even customers.

“Usually, a truck roll is the only way to get to the bottom of a problem,” said Praveen Kumar, Packet Island’s co-founder and president, in an interview with TMCnet, “and even that might not be enough because many issues affecting VoIP services are very transient.”

The PacketSmart system utilizes a series of micro-appliances that deliver network information via Ethernet to a hosted platform. Service providers, network operators and customers can access the data via the web to determine the best course of action to maintain or improve service.

The system can be used for pre-assessment of network conditions before service as activated, and then remain in place to provide ongoing monitoring for all VoIP calls. Deployment of the appliances, which measure about 4x4 inches, throughout a network can determine the nature of just about any network anomaly, even transient ones. Ethernet connectivity ensures that the devices are compatible with just about any network configuration or environment.

Kumar said the system is targeted primarily at small and medium enterprises (SMEs), so it was important that it be competitive with other monitoring tools on the market in terms of functionality, ease of deployment and cost.

“What we’re trying to do is eliminate the hurdles involved in ramping up VoIP services so the provider can quickly get in the process of making money,” he said. “Here is something that can be deployed for much less than the tens of thousands of dollars of a traditional system.”

Because the system uses a hosted application that users log into to gain access to data, the cost of deploying in-house monitoring software, and the environment to run it, is eliminated. The online service costs only “tens of dollars per month,” Kumar said.

Packet Island is also targeting the large value-added reseller (VAR) community, many of which has taken to providing IP Centrex services over public networks. Using the system’s network assessment component, providers gain visibility into network traffic patterns and can remotely manage configurations.

“It has the ability to manage PBX systems by leaving it in test mode for a week or so to come up with the true character of VoIP quality,” Kumar said.

At a time when surveys indicate close to 70 percent of business owners are dissatisfied with the quality of their VoIP deployments, any means to boost clarity and connectivity will be welcome.

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Arthur Cole is a freelance journalist specializing in the hi-tech communications and information field.