NetQoS Launches Unified Communications Monitor with Voice and Video Quality Monitoring

Network Performance Company Adds Support for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and Advanced Diagnostics and Reporting for IP Telephony Deployments

LONDON – Nov. 11, 2008 – NetQoS® Inc. launched version 2.0 of its award-winning VoIP Monitor product, now renamed NetQoS Unified Communications Monitor to reflect expanded capabilities in VoIP and the addition of video monitoring. NetQoS has added support for voice and video quality metrics in a Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007  environment as well as enhanced diagnostics and reporting for Cisco IP telephony environments to better monitor VoIP performance across the converged network.

Integrated in the NetQoS Performance Center, voice and video quality metrics from Unified Communications Monitor can be seen in context with other network-based performance indicators such as application response times and network traffic analysis statistics. Achieving this contextual view of network performance is critical for resolving the problems that affect users of unified communications (UC) systems.

“When UC applications encounter performance issues, they don’t just slow down, they become unusable,” said Zeus Kerravala, senior vice president of enterprise and enabling technologies at Yankee Group Research. “The complexity of presence, voice, and video on your IP network demands that network management tools present a unified view of the performance of these applications.”

“Office Communications Server 2007 adoption is growing because it’s easy to deploy as an extension of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and coexists within a PBX or IP PBX environment while retaining the benefits of each,” said Jim McQuaid, director of product management for NetQoS. “From the perspective of user experience and resource requirements, unified communications applications place greater demands on the network than any other networked applications to date. We’ve added support for Office Communications Server 2007 and enhanced our existing Cisco IP telephony capabilities to help customers better manage these environments for performance.”

NetQoS Unified Communications Monitor v2.0 quickly and accurately reports on voice – both narrow band and wideband – and video in a Microsoft unified communications environment. By receiving quality metrics directly from Microsoft’s Quality of Experience (QoE) Monitoring Server, Unified Communications Monitor reports on end-user experience without the need for additional collection devices.

“By extending enterprise monitoring and management to Office Communications Server 2007, NetQoS furthers its breadth and depth of expertise in Microsoft technologies. They  help customers proactively manage voice quality and confidently deploy Microsoft unified communications technologies in the enterprise,” said Yancey Smith, director of UC Product Management at Microsoft Corp. “We look forward to exploring how our relationship with NetQoS spurs innovation and drives enterprise-wide adoption of this next generation of business communications.”
 
Additional NetQoS Unified Communications Monitor enhancements include:

Automatic investigations: Unified Communications Monitor now provides automatic investigations for user-reported call quality problems. When a user indicates a call quality problem by pressing the Quality Reporting Tool (QRT) softkey on their IP phone, Unified Communications Monitor will automatically launch a Call Watch investigation. Call Watch then reports detailed troubleshooting information about the phone and the call quality metrics to the Unified Communications Monitor console.

Automatic, proactive notification of problems: Unified Communications Monitor extends its approach to proactive monitoring to include notification of call server problems. Specifically, Unified Communications Monitor will automatically generate alerts when significant phone registration problems occur or when a failover situation is identified.

Enhanced support for MSP environments: Unified Communications Monitor now includes group-based permissions and reporting, enabling grouping of locations and data according to geographic or functional characteristics.  For service providers, as well as for large enterprises, this grouping support makes managing and reporting on multiple customers simpler and less error-prone.
 
NetQoS will be showing demos of Unified Communications Monitor at VoiceCon San Francisco in booth number 617. Visitors to the booth may pick up a printed copy of the newly completed NetQoS ebook entitled, “VoIP: Do You See What I’m Saying? Managing VoIP Quality of Experience on Your Network.”

In addition, NetQoS director of product management Jim McQuaid will be speaking on a VoiceCon panel entitled, “QOS and QOE: Voice Quality Across Distributed Networks,” to be held on Tuesday, November 11 at 8:00 a.m. Pacific in room 131.

The NetQoS Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007, launched earlier this year, integrates network and application performance-related metrics from the NetQoS Performance Center into the Microsoft System Center Operations Manager console to help operations teams improve application delivery and reduce mean-time-to-repair.

Additional VoIP Resources:

Cisco Press Book: Taking Charge of Your VoIP Project
Webcast: Getting a Grip on VoIP
White Paper: VoIP Quality of Experience: Ensuring Your Network Supports Optimal VoIP Performance

Delicious page: http://delicious.com/EnterpriseVoIP_ManagingQualityofExperience