Vendors reacting as VoIP nets mature

By Phil Hochmuth and Denise Dubie, Network World
September 12, 2005 12:10 AM ET

Vendors are readying tools that move beyond helping companies prep their networks to handle VoIP and that focus instead on how well VoIP networks are running.

The latest offerings, from companies such as Brix Networks and EMC/SMARTS, take into consideration that production VoIP networks have become more widespread and that customers are starting to identify specific management obstacles. New offerings will address issues such as troubleshooting, performance and availability.

"It's the nuances of converged networks" that companies are dealing with now, says Michael Thurk, group vice president of Avaya's enterprise communications group.

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Vendors are readying tools that move beyond helping companies prep their networks to handle VoIP and that focus instead on how well VoIP networks are running.

The latest offerings, from companies such as Brix Networks and EMC/SMARTS, take into consideration that production VoIP networks have become more widespread and that customers are starting to identify specific management obstacles. New offerings will address issues such as troubleshooting, performance and availability.

"It's the nuances of converged networks" that companies are dealing with now, says Michael Thurk, group vice president of Avaya's enterprise communications group.

VoIP management is expected to be a hot topic at next week's Voice on the Net (VON) conference in Boston, where a host of product rollouts are scheduled. While the show caters largely to carriers and their VoIP concerns, plenty of corporate network issues also will be discussed and debated, including security and Session Initiation Protocol developments.

Among the companies planning announcements at the event is Apparent Networks, which says a new release of its AppareNet Enterprise Voice product has troubleshooting and ongoing monitoring features. A version released earlier this year focused mainly on predeployment assessment.

Martin Webb, manager of data network operations for the province of British Columbia, Victoria, has been beta testing the new version and says the software could help him determine performance of voice before getting end-user complaints.

"AppareNet has the ability to test quality of service and simulate simultaneous call loads and report [mean opinion score], which directly relate to the end-user experience," he says. "Without being able to measure [mean opinion score], we would be strictly dependent upon user feedback to determine overall service performance."

AppareNet Enterprise Voice software sends packets across the network and analyzes returning data to determine router configurations, network latency and application delivery times. It includes software installed on a dedicated server as well as software agents - what Apparent calls sequencers - installed on servers in key data centers. The server software, which starts at $170,000, manages the distributed agents.

EMC also intends to get into the voice management market, which IDC estimates will more than triple from $103 million this year to $320 million in 2009. Through its SMARTS purchase completed in February, EMC plans to offer VON attendees a peek at its EMC/SMARTS VoIP Manager 1.0 software bundle. Expected to ship by year-end, the software is designed to help companies measure the availability of their voice applications across large networks as well as provide insight into performance.

The software installs on multiple servers in a large company and uses existing instrumentation, native interfaces and tools such as SNMP to collect availability and performance statistics from network and voice gear. It includes features to help customers measure application and TCP port availability, and monitor performance from hosts to IP phones. EMC/SMARTS says the VoIP management bundle will provide discovery and alarm mapping for Cisco and Nortel gear, with plans to add other vendor gear such as Avaya.