Enterprise contact centers are becoming extremely complex, using technology from multiple vendors to meet specific customer requirements.  Today, clients are using new media types such as smart phones and tablets to reach out so you need to explore new technologies such as cloud services to consolidate and improve your delivery.

Why Test the Customer Quality of Experience?

When you change or deploy new technology you need to understand the caller’s perspective, from the greeting through to the agents desktop.  Testing will do three things for you:

1. Maximize ROI by reducing your system down time and accelerate payback when deploying new technology
2. Reduce your Risk, with multiple vendors within our systems. Interoperability issues can occur and can be addressed before deployment
3. Improve Customer Satisfaction by validating the actual customer experience.

What do You Test For?

1. Infrastructure - This encompasses everything from the carrier network through to the desktop.  By placing real calls from the outside in, you effectively test your voice gateway, the PBX, SIP trunks, load balancing rules, and the effect Data traffic could have on Voice Quality.   You should be able to understand how many calls per minute the system can connect, how the carrier handles overflow, the number of failed calls, busy signals, and ring no answer, etc.
2. Self Service Applications – technologies such as speech recognition and IVR are crucial to ensure that calls are handled efficiently.   By testing you can understand if the correct prompts are being heard, if your time to connect is acceptable, if the database lookup performing correctly under load conditions, or simply if the responses correlate correctly to the user input.
3. CTI Routing –  is the integration between the IVR and external systems working correctly, and is the CTI application receiving the correct data
4. CRM Integration:  Are the screen POP’s coming on time and are the agents getting the right information, with the right call, at the right time.

 
With a comprehensive plan you can test connectivity by changing the volume of calls or the mix of calls to simulate your defined and expected real world customer conditions and record accurate results.  Detailed behaviour reports are important to allow you to create actionable tasks that address details of what level of load any failures occur.

StressTest allows you to understand how your systems will react to callers rather than letting your customers react to your system.

Telnet Networks is pleased to announce that it has signed on with OPNET Synergy Partner Program to represent their solutions for application and network performance management.  OPNET has been recognized by Gartner in the “leader” Quadrant of the Magic Quadrant for Application Performance Monitoring.

After evaluating the solution Telnet Networks felt OPNET would be an excellent addition to its product line for Application Performance Monitoring.   Your network needs to deliver robust applications and you need to accelerate problem resolution, enable problem prevention, and improve the efficiency of both IT infrastructure and IT staff resources.   The OPNET solution delivers broad visibility and monitoring across infrastructure domains as well as deep data collection and analytics to enable powerful root cause diagnosis.

OPNET’s APM Xpert™Suite of products include

•  AppResponse Xpert ™ uniquely combines end-user experience monitoring and in-depth analysis of the behavior and performance of the underlying network. It leverages the network’s central role as a conduit for data and transactions to obtain complete visibility of IT services across the enterprise. Real-time on-board analytics determine which components in the application infrastructure are contributing most to delays.
• AppInternals Xpert ™ looks deep into the complex software frameworks of modern applications, leveraging vast amounts of performance and forensic data to support all aspects of service assurance from the server perspective. It performs high definition monitoring, forensic data collection for all transactions, and powerful analytics for any type of application, and excels in particular in Java and Microsoft .NET environments.
• AppMapper Xpert™ automatically produces a run-time application map, identifying the underlying application and infrastructure components that enable a production application. It leverages a rich repository of operational data obtained from OPNET solutions and instrumentation already deployed for performance management.
• AppTransaction Xpert ™ and AppTransaction Xpert™ Packet Trace Warehouse provide centralized management and in-depth analysis of transaction forensics collected across the enterprise.
• AppSQL Xpert™ provides deep visibility into database performance through real-time monitoring of a broad range of metrics, with drilldowns to fine-grained forensic database transaction data for troubleshooting. It performs detailed tracking of database usage for trending and performance optimization. AppSQL Xpert offers an agentless approach that imposes zero overhead on database operation.
• AppSensor Xpert™ uses agentless, remote instrumentation to capture additional performance information from all types of infrastructure components, including servers, application components, network devices, storage systems, and manufacturer-specific management systems. It supplies this data to OPNET’s APM solution suite for a more complete picture of end-to-end application performance.

Two Trends face IT Professionals Face as they Continue to Grow Their Network 10Gig Migration Network Convergence

To meet these demands you can replace you existing tools or aggregate, filter and load balance your traffic to the tools with Director Xstream

• Director Xstream has 24 10Gig ports so that you can pre-filter the traffic you need and direct the traffic you need to your 1Gig monitoring tools
• Director Xstream also comes with Low Latency Cut through technology, which supplies very low latency on all packet sizes or traffic type.
  Each Port also has concurrent port duplexing, meaning that each port can handle 10Gig in and 10Gig out for a total of 20Gig.

Telepresence is the ability to conduct live meetings and simulate the attendee’s senses, by delivering high quality video and audio over an IP network.  To ensure you end up with the experience you want, each session is reliant on zero media faults and zero network interruptions.

To conduct a Telepresence meeting you connect multiple individual end-points to a central meeting management server.  The server manages many aspects of the call including the video and audio distribution.  However, prior to commencing a call the unique remote end-points need to authenticate usually through a SIP registration server. Other components in a Telepresence deployment include meeting schedulers.

Testing your telepresence equipment is essential to ensure that you end up with the experience you want. Testing can be complex,  as a critical feature to testing Telepresence, is the ability to measure performance on each and every one of the 4 unique media flows (video  in – out and audio in - out) associated with each and every emulated test or end-point.   You may also want to inject traffic into the system so that you can disrupt the meeting, further testing the security and reliability of the deployment.

Sample Telepresence Test Scenarios

• Live Meeting Performance:
  • Emulate and measure performance of the Telepresence meeting’s video and audio with stateful emulated end-points. Test for interoperability issues with end-points using different video and audio codecs.
• Network Capacity Testing:
  • Examine network capacity with a small number and/or many emulated Telepresence end-points, threshold test acceptable packet loss.
  • Create real world scenarios with mixed application traffic loads. Examine the impact on each and every emulated Telepresence end-point’s video and audio quality.
• Telepresence Meeting Scalability:
  • Test the registration server capacity to handle many registrations. Determine if a meeting manager server functionality handles over subscriptions to a meeting correctly. Emulate and analyze secure media sessions such as SRTP.

diversifEye Per Flow test platform allows you measure the characteristics on each and every flow using the following test scenario’s.

• Stateful: Test end-points must communicate with 3rd party servers
• TCP/UDP Aware: Capable of negotiating network control signals and requests
• SIP Aware: Respond to SIP protocol requests
• Application Aware: Test end-points should receive and transmit video and audio i.e. (4 x media flows)
• Per flow Aware: Measure performance on each of the associated voice and video flows
• Codec Independent: Test end-points can use a number of different codecs
• Multiple Clients: The number of test points needs to be scalable

HOUSTON – May 27, 2009 – Financial considerations influence all IT decision-making, but ensuring employee productivity rather than cost savings is a top priority for enterprise adoption of unified communications (UC), according to a recent survey by  NetIQ Corporation . However, without proper management of disparate UC technologies, organizations cannot measure the return on their investments.

Comprising feedback from over 400 global respondents, survey results indicate that foreseen challenges are lengthening the adoption curve for UC. Sixty-three percent of respondents noted that the main roadblock they face is getting employees accustomed to using UC technologies. Without employee buy-in and usage, organizations do not benefit from integrated email, messaging, phone systems and more, diminishing the returns on UC investments.

Employee adoption of UC requires organizations to monitor and measure UC usage trends to effectively track employee adoption rates. Of survey respondents, only six percent noted their intent to monitor and measure usage trends and 19 percent have no plans in place to ensure internal adoption, leaving administrators unable to collect productivity metrics and optimize quality of experience (QoE). With the proper tools in place, administrators can ease the management lifecycle and leverage monitoring and reporting capabilities to help justify their UC expenditures.

Additional findings and concerns highlighted by the survey include:

• Forty-three percent of respondents have not determined whether their network is ready or able to support real-time communication technologies that are part of UC.
• Thirty-three percent of participants indicated concerns with the ability of their network infrastructure to handle the new demands UC would place on it.
• Fifty percent of respondents shy away from management tools due to cost.
• Forty-seven percent do not believe they have the necessary skill sets to maintain and deploy management technology appropriately.
• Eighty-seven percent of respondents cited e-mail/messaging as a primary component of their UC deployment, while 65 percent selected VoIP/voice and 64 percent noted mobile devices.
• Seventy-three percent of survey participants deemed Microsoft their vendor of choice for UC.

“Balancing cost concerns with the benefits of greater employee productivity is a standard approach to how organizations make technology choices. However, these survey results indicate that more often than not, internal IT teams are not well-armed to ensure successful adoption of UC technologies. This makes it even more difficult for them to help end-users master these new technologies so their investments realize a solid return,” commented Criss Scruggs, senior manager of Product Marketing at NetIQ. “That’s why NetIQ delivers a proactive lifecycle approach to managing UC technologies. By helping organizations implement UC, monitor performance as well as manage and report on quality and usage easily, teams can better manage their deployments so that those investments yield the greater levels of productivity they seek.”

About NetIQ

NetIQ, an Attachmate business, is a global leader in systems and security management. With more than 12,000 customers in over 60 countries, NetIQ solutions maximize technology investments and enable IT process improvements to achieve measurable cost savings. For more information on NetIQ’s portfolio of award-winning products for IT Process Automation, Systems Management, Security Management, Configuration Audit and Control, Enterprise Administration and Unified Communications Management.

About Telnet Networks

Telnet Networks is a premier partner of NetIQ Voice Solutions and delivers end to end test and monitoring solutions to verify and monitor key network projects. We can accelerate deployment of new services like VoIP, lower your operating expenses, improve application performance and increase productivity across each critical phase of the network life cycle. We can analyze, troubleshoot, monitor, manage and secure today’s complex converged network infrastructure.

Please contact us for more information 800-561-4019 – www.telnetnetworks.ca

New data from TeleGeography show that at the end of Q3 2011 telcos worldwide had a total of 94 million pay-TV subscribers, giving them a 12% share of the global pay-TV market. Given current growth rates the subscriber total will be passing the 100-million milestone as this article is being written. Leading the telco charge is America Movil with ten million pay-TV subscribers, thanks to a dominant market position in Brazil and Colombia and substantial pay-TV operations in several other Latin American countries. It is followed by China Telecom and Rostelecom, both of which focus solely on their home markets, and France Telecom-Orange which has pay-TV operations in Poland, Spain and Slovakia in addition to being one of the leaders in the French market.

While telcos’ pay-TV activities are commonly equated with IPTV, that is only a part of the story. Many telcos have clearly identified IPTV as being important both strategically and tactically, but it accounts for less than 60% of their pay-TV subscribers. Several telcos are investing heavily in cable TV and satellite DTH operations, while pay-DTT and some residual MMDS services are also part of the mix. As examples, America Movil has achieved its leadership position by developing or acquiring cable and DTH businesses, and it has hardly any IPTV interests; and number three ranked telco Rostelecom can thank cable TV for providing 85% of its pay-TV subscriber base.

However, IPTV remains a crucial factor in the telco sector’s pay-TV growth prospects, as TeleGeography’s John Dinsdale points out: ‘Looking to the future there is no doubt that telcos will further increase their share of the pay-TV market. While telcos will continue to invest in cable and DTH operations, over the next five years it will primarily be strong IPTV growth that enables them to gain market share. We forecast that the IPTV subscriber base will have doubled in size by the end of 2016, which will help telcos gain control of some 16% of the pay-TV market.’

TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Pay-TV Research Service provides data, analysis and forecasts of the rapidly changing pay-TV and IPTV markets. ( http://www.telegeography.com/research-services/globalcomms-pay-tv/index.html )