ComputerWeekly.com: VoIP network monitoring improves VoIP deployment
As a company that makes and sells network monitoring solutions, we are forced to reluctantly concur with this Computer Weekly article, which encourages the purchase and use of network monitoring solutions.
The research has revealed that companies believe that VoIP applications… change too fast for network hardware to keep up. “People are adopting VoIP before it’s maturing,” said Charles Thompson, manager of sales engineering for Network Instruments. “And this is why monitoring is now so important and necessary.”
Even though 45% of the US organizations surveyed had already implemented VoIP, only 32% felt that they could properly monitor VoIP performance. In addition, 36% of network managers and administrators reported questioning their own personal ability to implement a VoIP system, even though they expected to begin a deployment in the near future.
An interesting reality is that a lot of the network “stuff” including VoIP, does work okay much of the time without management. Many folks can and do deploy networks and VoIP without any management. However, this leaves them flying blind. Eventually they bump into something bad and have a fit trying to fix it. Likewise, they have no good way to measure performance, especially at the user experience level. That’s not a good plan.
GigaOm: Data is good, but not without voice.
As mobile phone carriers worry about the iPhone and worry about pushing out videos, games, music, and the Internet through your sellpho- I mean, cellphone, they haven’t focused on the cellular mobile phone’s killer app. Voice – which in the U.S., is appalling.
In 2006, voice brought in about $110 billion, and that is such a large amount of money that the U.S. wireless providers should cringe at the fact that they have to use advertising tag lines such as “fewest dropped calls” or ask people to come and try their service for 30 days or switch back for free.
No self-respecting descendant of Ma Bell should be able to sleep at night till they fix the voice network. After all Europeans have managed to lick the dropped call problem, by putting decent enough quality in place. Even the Chinese and Indian carriers with their microscopic ARPU manage to complete calls pretty much everywhere.
Weirdly, the mobile phone companies problems are the exact opposite of most of Corporate America – they’re trying to get their networks, designed for voice, to handle data, while everyone else is trying to get networks designed for data to handle voice. Furthermore, you wouldn’t roll out VoIP on a TCP/IP dominated network that had significant problems – why is it prudent, then, for mobile companies to roll out TCP/IP apps on a voice network that doesn’t quite work right?
Heck, there’s a cell tower right outside my apartment window and I still get dropped calls from time to time.
Reuters: Early U.S. Daylight Savings a bust in power savings
We’ve previously covered the change in DST…
But other than forcing millions of drowsy American workers and school children into the dark, wintry weather three weeks early, the move appears to have had little impact on power usage.
“We haven’t seen any measurable impact,” said Jason Cuevas, spokesman for Southern Co., one of the nation’s largest power companies, echoing comments from several large utilities.
The way I see it is this: What’s harder for you to do – get up in the morning when it’s not light out yet, or drive home after work when it’s dark?
GigaOm: In VoIP, Cisco thinks small to go big.
Called the Smart Business Communication System (apparently telecom stuff doesn’t get any creative naming), Cisco’s package offers more than just an integrated voice system – it allows users (and resellers) to add in wireless infrastructure, small routers and integration with vertical-application packages…
Cisco’s target for its SMB offering is in the just-under-99-seat range, a market segment that may be a bit higher in functionality needs than the businesses who might look at Microsoft’s promised phone-in-a-box offering, or to Fonality’s or Digium’s no-cost open-source PBXs. While Moran said ease of installation (“Our target is to have phones working less than 5 minutes after plugging the boxes in”) is still a criteria for Cisco’s intended SMB base, it’s probably more likely that a Cisco SMB VoIP sale will come through one of the company’s thousands of reseller partners, who may want to bundle wireless, Internet access and web hosting together as part of an integrated small-business communications package.
If you have 90-98 employees, can your business still be considered “small?”
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