Unified Communications

Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) Environment

While both small and large enterprises are interested in taking advantage of the productivity and cost-saving benefits of unifying voice, messaging and collaboration applications, many want to avoid the operational burdens and capital expenses of deploying and supporting Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC&C) services on their own. Increasingly, Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) and managed UC&C are emerging as desirable alternatives to premise-based self-managed UC&C platforms.

In turn, service providers, driven to generate revenue from new services at the lowest cost, are seizing the opportunity to build UC&C into their portfolios. In their effort to gain market share, they’re looking to offer differentiated services that encourage adoption, marked by flexibility and the on-demand self-service, “pay-as-you-go” cloud service characteristics that enterprises are seeking. Virtualization platforms in the data center will be utilized to support the special needs of cloud services and as a means to optimize the provider’s CAPEX and OPEX.

With these characteristics contributing a layer of complexity to service management, ensuring the highest quality of performance becomes more challenging but is still one of the most critical success factors. Regardless of who has the responsibility for UC&C services (the service provider or the enterprise itself), an effective performance management solution  is needed to address the challenges of delivering and managing UC&C services, especially in the cloud or managed service environment. The solution needs to:

• Support quick rollout of UC&C services as an out-of-the-box operational support system (OSS) that understands the dynamic nature of cloud services

• Provide holistic visibility across the complex and interdependent physical and virtual infrastructure from the UC&C data center to the customer over the WAN—to effectively manage overall UC&C service performance and the quality of the end user experience

• Properly manage and report on the many and hierarchical tiers of UC&C customers and business units serviced by cloud and managed service providers or enterprise IT

• Facilitate management of each customer’s expected service levels in line with service level agreements

•  Offer visibility into changing utilization patterns to support effective service growth and resource planning

InfoVista offers a solution for Unified Communications service performance assurance that addresses these challenges, equipping cloud and managed service providers and enterprise IT with the information needed to ensure that they are delivering the best user experience and are able to effectively manage the performance of UC&C services delivered within the cloud or by customer premise equipment.

InfoVista’s comprehensive, yet cost-effective, UC&C product suite encompasses proactive monitoring, real-time troubleshooting, reporting, and capacity management functions in a multi-tenant architecture that supports virtualization technologies and cloud computing.