The MegaPath Connectivity Blog

It’s been a fairly busy couple of weeks since our hosted VoIP solution, Duet Hosted Voice, was first announced at the Channel Partners Conference in Las Vegas. We’ve been fortunate to have held numerous conversations with technology, telecom trade writers, editors, bloggers, and industry analysts about why all hosted VoIP services are NOT alike. There are no shortage of issues to share with them, especially when the conversation turns to delivering calls in the cloud. Mention the cloud in relation to business-class hosted voice services and it brings up the subject of phone features delivery,  business continuity, secure call delivery, broadband service connectivity uptime, public vs. private clouds, and of course, ensuring call quality. In fact, network and voice quality are two very significant issues. Many hosted VoIP providers tout a high-quality voice experience, but they neglect to inform potential customers that their voice traffic is routed over the public Internet, where it is highly susceptible to jitter and packet-loss, plus a list of security concerns. That’s a fairly big gap in information. Considering that the voice communications in your organization are the ultimate real-time communications, ensuring that jitter and packet-loss on the public internet don’t translate into echo, static, buzz, hiss and other distinctively low-quality call experiences should be high priorities. MegaPath addresses those priorities by carrying voice traffic on our own private, secure MPLS VPN network to guarantee bi-directional voice quality. Our Duet Hosted customers’ calls will always be insulated from the unpredictable realities of the public internet.

In fact Robin Gareiss of Nemertes Research noted in her Network World blog “Hosted VoIP Needs QoS” how network-enabled quality of service (QoS) is an important consideration in selecting a hosted voice service provider, but something that is NOT found in bring-your-own-broadband (BYOB) offerings. I appreciate her insights on that point.

Getting back to the idea of why hosted VoIP providers are not all alike, we put together the Duet 2-Minute Test that will challenge what you know about hosted voice. It’s short — just 5 questions — about the risks of cloud-powered calling. Click the link, take the test, and enter to win a $100.00 Amazon.com gift card to be awarded April 1. Feel free to share the test link, too.

If you’re ready to learn more about the top considerations for choosing a hosted voice service provider, download our latest white paper. You’ll get practical guidance on purchasing hosted VoIP solutions. And of course, let us know what you think.

If you haven’t had a chance to read Michael Francois’ last post; now is a good time because his insights are closely related to today’s Managed Services workshop at Channel Partners Conference in Las Vegas. MegaPath’s Bernie McGroder, who heads our sales engineering team, will be participating on the panel “Becoming an MSP: Is Managed Services Right for You?”  He’ll be in good company with industry leaders from Nemertes Research and CompTIA, among others. If you’re at the show today in Vegas, definitely plan to join Bernie at 2:30 pm.

On a daily basis Bernie and his team of sales engineers work closely with customers to help them identify the most pressing issues in IT operations and service delivery for the companies they support; and of course, to counsel those teams on the value that a dedicated outside team of voice, data, and security network experts can provide as a managed services partner. Bernie will be tackling the subject of earned and learned experience when he covers what becoming an MSP entails — from building and staffing a 24/7 NOC, to developing a service portfolio, to building processes and transitioning customers to the new delivery platform. In a recent conversation with an engineer from Bernie’s team, he noted “there really isn’t a customer network problem or situation we haven’t seen before. Our customers seem to appreciate all the experience we draw from, and our ability to meet their issue where it’s at, with the right advice.”

It’s this collective knowledge base and the experience gained from running 24/7/365 NOCs  that Michael Francois talked about in his insights on MegaPath’s successful certification process to achieve Cisco Master Managed Services Provider status. There may be a long list of MSPs in North America, but we’re honored to be part of this elite group of Cisco MSP partners.  Few MSPs can claim their expertise across voice, data, and secure network operations. In addition to NOCs, MegaPath runs a Secure Operations Center.  Back in a June 2009 post we noted the success our SOC team has had in supporting security customers by surpassing a 300,000 user milestone on our SSL platform, and more than 3.5 billion sessions. We’re seeing much demand for SSL VPN services, and just last month we passed another record.

Now that brings me to voice, which is a significant and growing part of MegaPath’s business. Our Connecticut-based voice operations team has been successfully providing managed Duet(SM) integrated voice and data services to customers and addressing 3 varieties – analog, PRI, and SIP trunking — for several years. Starting today MegaPath is introducing Duet Hosted Voice, a new hosted service solution addition to the Duet product family. We’re unquestionably excited about it, because even though MegaPath has been providing cloud-powered calling before the cloud was cool; many customers have been asking for a hosted VoIP service. For a sneak peek of what’s really special about Duet Hosted, stop by Booth 1301 at the Channel Partners show. You can also get a deeper dive into Duet Hosted by attending MegaPath University (also at Channel Partners in Room Islander B). The sessions are FREE, just register online for tomorrow’s courses.

Finally, since I’m on the subject of hosted voice, this is a great time to welcome a new voice for voice to Connectivity. Tomorrow you’ll get a chance to meet Diane Giuffre who has been knee-deep in getting Duet Hosted ready for our customers. Remember, if you’re in Vegas for Channel Partners, don’t miss Bernie McGroder’s session today or MegaPath University tomorrow!

5 Minutes with Tommy Triplett of Rumbi Island Grill

Is there anything better than a good story? Tommy Triplett was kind enough to tell his story by sharing this video of his customer experience.

For people like us here at MegaPath, where we’re managing network access, voice, and security services to literally thousands of customers in all industries, and solving a very diverse range of network connectivity-based problems for them, we hear customer stories all the time. And that’s great because we just never tire of them. Learning how we helped a customer address their big IT priorities and meet some interesting challenges is the kind of insight that drives us. It’s equally important when we can get a glimpse of typical day-in-the-life stuff that really does matter to our customers.

Watch Tommy describe how MegaPath is helping Rumbi Island Grill, an aggressively expanding Hawaiian restaurant group, put connectivity to work in its 22 locations across Arizona, Colorado, and Utah. Their fun, innovative dining experience is well-served by MegaPath MPLS virtual private network (VPN) , Managed Security, and PCI compliance services. Tommy leads the IT project management team. He was challenged by rolling out new restaurants, but without a cookie-cutter approach to site specs, network user needs and broadband access services. He needed the best-fit type of flexible approach that MegaPath provides in our site-to-site MPLS VPN solutions. We’re helping Rumbi Island Grill to protect their network assets and customer credit card transactions, plus putting access to system status into the hands of Tommy’s team through a customer portal that they “just love”.

Tommy tells their story best, so please watch Success at Rumbi Island Grill.

For more information about how MegaPath ensures PCI compliance for restaurants and retailers like Rumbi Island Grill, start here.

This Sunday at 6:18 pm eastern, will you be tuned to the Colts and Saints game big-screen style? Tapped into an online stream? Both?

Last year’s Super Bowl had a reported audience of 1 Billion worldwide, with broadcasts or online streams to 232 countries and available in 34 languages. Shortly afterwards, CBS announced that they were in talks with the NFL to live stream this year’s Super Bowl XLIV, in addition to the mega TV broadcast programming that American fans have come to expect. You may be asking:  who would be interested in watching an online stream of the Super Bowl when they could watch it on network TV? Turns out plenty of people want that online connection to the big game, for a variety of reasons. The old argument that streaming the game online would cut into the broadcast viewing audience and upset TV advertisers who are investing millions for seconds’ worth of attention just doesn’t pan out.

In an April 15 interview article in BusinessWeek, Brian Rolapp, who leads media strategy for the NFL, noted that the NBC regular season online streaming tests they conducted had revealed the millions of online viewers did not cannibalize the broadcast audience for Sunday games. In fact, they found that ”80% of viewers turned to the streams to complement TV watching, as the Internet version offered four alternative camera angles to supplement NBC’s primary picture.” Clearly fans want to tap into a better, more extensive sports experience, and of course, they want to do it on their terms. Think of the possibilities — the online stream offers you and your Super Bowl party goers stats on all the plays with the ability to display that data by any number of variables. Maybe like a real-time pivot table. Then again if you won’t be parked in front of a big-screen for the game, you may want to rely on a mobile device for on-demand Super Bowl connectivity. Surely someone is thinking of that, since I learned that the ad-supported March Madness stream for the iPhone was an absolute hit. And while Tivo can help viewers watch what they want ad-free, that’s not really an issue for the Super Bowl. This is one day when people tune in to see what the best ads will be. They can vote online for their favorites, and of course, they can vote online for the game MVP. Connectivity and interaction are definitely being force-fed into the Super Bowl experience.

If you’re someone who won’t be in front of a TV for the big game and want to watch it all online, that’s great — provided that network capacity allows the stream to be free of those annoying gaps and pauses that you sometimes experience on Hulu or YouTube. For the network administrators and IT professionals reading this post, you can imagine the bandwidth required to ensure seamless delivery of the Super Bowl to millions of online fans. At MegaPath we work with IT leaders all the time on engineering their network for performance and security in order to ensure their traffic is segregated, optimized and prioritized. Increasingly our customers’ network traffic involves delivery of voice and video applications for their users, and our engineering experts work with them to support those business-critical services and ensure Quality of Service (QoS). It’s an exercise in fine-tuning. Our customers’ organizations are dynamic, and so are the networks that they rely on. Connectivity, flexibility, and application performance are critical to technology providers and users — and while your network may not need to be robust enough to scale to millions of online Super Bowl viewers, your users may not be any less demanding. MegaPath network, voice, and security experts are always ready to answer your questions.

Enjoy the game on Sunday!

How Secure, Reliable SSL VPN Service Works

There’s no denying that this has been the week for iPad news domination.

Good, bad, or indifferent — people are certainly talking about the iPad! I can’t think of any news source I’ve seen this week that didn’t include some mention of Apple’s new mobile device. Fast Company featured a story this week called “Apple iPad Launch by the Numbers” that provides a good glimpse at the growing trends toward relying on mobile devices to tap into whatever information sharing and use, or interactive conversations we want, whenever we want. The flexibility is just so powerful. It’s that same on-the-fly usefulness that applies to people who access and rely on your organization’s network for the applications and information resources that are most critical to their work or business. The trend towards more users connecting into your network using a variety of personally owned or business-provided devices at any time, from anywhere presents complex, multi-layered security issues for the IT leaders tasked with managing these critical capabilities. We definitely know that the trend isn’t going to reverse itself — not hardly. Can IT leaders restrict access to critical network resources to an ‘approved list of devices’?

Remember the old story of the little Dutch boy who poked his finger in the dike to plug a leak? Whew! — then a new one sprung up, and another, and another until he ran out of fingers. How did that work out for him?

A better security method for proactive IT organizations is to embrace the realities of a burgeoning population of mobile wireless users, and engineer your network with practical, scalable means to provide secure remote access to the critical resources your mobile users need. This is moving away from a ‘nice to have’ into a necessity. Managed SSL VPN services are designed to securely enable user access methods by defining control policies and combining them with end point control and policy zones. This type of flexibility defines the type of access environment a user experiences — essentially providing even your most far-flung iPad-toting globetrotters with reliable connectivity and information sharing, while ensuring that your network hums along without compromise. Done right, this SSL VPN-enabled secure connectivity can even be a competitive advantage.

To learn how MegaPath SSL VPN services work, start here.

Let us hear your thoughts and questions!