A Look at Where the Voice Management Industry is Headed in 2012

2011 was undoubtedly characterized by the advent of several technologies just as VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), SIP and the cloud as then as some controversy surrounding call quality and the lack thereof.

Recent Infonectics Technology 3Q11 market share report

According to a recent Infonectics Technology 3Q11 market share report, businesses are continuing to transition to IP-based phone systems although the global economy is nevertheless testy: "Hybrid IP PBX (Private -Automatic- Branch Exchange)s continue to dominate, making up near 2/3 of global revenue; pure IP PBX (Private -Automatic- Branch Exchange)s continue to grow as a proportion of the overall market, making up almost 1/3 now and growing."

"Obviously the migration to VoIP, SIP, and UC technologies is progressing, and is predicted to continue in 2012," Tracey Whitney, director of marketing for Tone Software, told TMCnet. "Nevertheless as businesses move forward with these investments, they are keeping a close eye on the expected returns in user productivity, improved business processes, and lower overall operational costs. The catch: when VoIP call quality is poor, and the voice network is plagued with performance and availability issues, the business cannot realize the expected returns from their converged communications investments. Poor quality drags down user adoption, impedes user productivity, slows business processes, and increases support costs as IT teams struggle to deal with user complaints and the underlying network issues."

Nowadays, call quality and proper voice management have become integral elements for a company’s success and everyone from IT teams to users to business executives has their eye on these two capabilities.

One company that continues to push the envelope when it comes to voice management capabilities is Tone Software and it does this thanks to its ReliaTel VoIP Quality and Network Service Assurance innovation. With call quality and voice management only gaining in importance, Tone Software feels so then positioned to meet these demands in 2012 thanks to its powerful VoIP QoS and converged voice network management capabilities that ensure the call quality and network performance necessary to drive the desired ROI from convergence technologies, according to Whitney.

The continued migration to VoIP

While 2012 will truly see the continued migration to VoIP, SIP and UC technologies and a heightened attention on voice management, it will as well call into focus the challenges that all in all exist.

"Voice is an evolutionary research that continues to progress in new ways with new applications, when all is said and done the challenges will continue to evolve as so then," Whitney said. "Nevertheless, at the core of voice management, is the underlying necessity to provide a rock solid network infrastructure that can drive real-time voice services. Because businesses often migrate to advanced communications technologies by degree, the underlying network is frequently comprised of a diverse mixture of manufacturers, devices and technologies, which furthermore increases the obstacles to achieving effective end to end management of the environment."

Tone’s ReliaTel voice management solution is ready to handle these challenges as things are platform agnostic, providing key VoIP QoS, TDM PBX, and IPT network service level management across virtually any mix of innovation, including Avaya, Nortel, Cisco, Siemens, Mitel, NEC, etc. Accordingly, businesses can deploy ReliaTel across their entire migration path and throughout their adoption cycles of IP based communications.

Among those changes is that face that with VoIP and convergence taking off, many traditional network management tools are now offering VoIP management elements or capabilities. For instance, ReliaTel provides over 60 core quality of service statistics, including listening quality and jitter buffer overrun metrics, as so then as both active and passive analytics including low level application and transport layer statistics on a per call basis – all of which are important to rapidly and accurately troubleshoot and resolve call quality and voice network issues, according to Whitney.

"In 2012, businesses will make innovation investments and purchases that can really provide payback in the short run," she said. "Cloud-based offerings are a strong option for businesses that want to progress without requiring large up front capital expenditures, and significant IT staff to deploy and maintain research. Economic conditions being what they are, it is likely cloud solutions will see significant growth in the coming year."