No Small or Medium Business wants to turn itself into a phone company, so selecting a managed VoIP telephony provider requires a vendor that provides careful monitoring of service and equipment to ensure reliable delivery of broadband Voice over IP (VoIP) services over cable or DSL networks.

Whaleback Systems provides 24/7 monitoring of its CrystalBlue VoIP phone service from its Managed Services Center. The monitoring information is stored at a secured hosting site to support disaster recovery, and is only accessible to authorized Whaleback engineers from remote locations via a web-based interface. Whaleback network engineers monitor the status of each customer, and sophisticated alarms and events are used to proactively troubleshoot network operations to identify any potential issues before they impact telephony services.

The Whaleback Managed Services Center monitors, manages and optimizes all telephony services (including calls, faxes, conferences, voicemail and call routing) as one integrated service so customers benefit from carrier-grade reliability with the economic and productivity advantages of VoIP.

The Managed Services Center utilizes an advanced toolset for end-to-end monitoring and management of the CrystalBlue Voice Service. It provides total visibility into a call’s path as it crosses multiple IP networks. A graphical network mapping tool is used to visually monitor the health and performance of these networks, with multiple views that display call quality information by provider, by customer or by user.

Whaleback Managed Services Center personnel monitor and analyze call volume, traffic bottlenecks, usage patterns and call histories. The system also performs a periodic health check of every remote PBX system for its availability and operating status. A system fault that might occur on any customer site can be detected within minutes.

A graphical network mapping tool is used to visually monitor the health and performance of these networks, with multiple views that display call quality information by provider, by customer or by user.

Automatic notification of system problems or service degradation is based on alarms that trigger whenever call quality thresholds are violated. Whaleback personnel immediately investigate and resolve the problem—usually before the customer is aware of or impacted by, the event. When a service degrades, the affected call path is traced to isolate faults and leverage drill-down diagnostics to determine the root cause.