The MegaPath Connectivity Blog

As promised in my post yesterday, I’m pleased to introduce the Connectivity community today to Diane Giuffre, Voice Product Manager here at MegaPath, and a welcome new voice for voice over MPLS solutions. You’ll be hearing regularly from Diane as she takes voice-related questions from you, and helps to develop a deeper discussion about a key focus area for voice solutions at MegaPath: putting the quality back in voice. But first, you need to know a little something about Diane’s background and her tenure in voice communications.

Diane has 25 years experience in telecommunications, 17 of which was spent at MCI Communications.  She spent the first 10 years in voice network engineering, and then made the switch to marketing.  Diane’s product management focus has been on products like voice conferencing, collaboration, unified communications, and VoIP.  Her first introduction to VoIP was in 2004, when MCI rolled out its VoIP audio conferencing product. Subsequent to MCI, Diane worked for a hosted IP PBX company, working on introducing new features.

Fast forward to late 2009 when Diane joined MegaPath and jumped right into the thick of the development process of bringing our latest voice and data service, Duet(SM) Hosted Voice, to market. By now you may have seen yesterday’s announcement on our hosted business voip service, so indeed, Diane’s timing for joining the voice product team could not have been better. On Paul Marra, VP Voice Products’ team, Diane helped to develop what is unique about Duet Hosted. Officially described as a complete, cost-effective hosted IP PBX solution that gives businesses a feature-rich and scalable alternative to traditional phone service and expensive equipment, Duet Hosted is also the industry’s first true, national, Voice over MPLS solution. It’s because of the MegaPath network – the largest broadband reach of any network in North America, and the broadest Quality of Service (QoS)-enabled voice network – that Diane, Paul, and the rest of the voice team can confidently offer any size organization an enterprise-level hosted voice experience. I’m looking forward to the opportunities in this forum to spend some time talking about putting the quality back into voice. I’m also interested in learning more from Diane as she addresses call quality and secure call delivery issues that happen when mission-critical voice services are exposed to the public internet. Priority issue #1: dynamic bandwidth allocation. If you’re a network engineer, that’s an issue near and dear to you. You’re in the right place.

If you have hosted VoIP, integrated voice and data (managed voice services), or QoS questions for Diane, go ahead and submit a comment and she’ll be glad to address them. Stop back soon for regular voice posts from Diane, and feel free to share what you learn.

Ask the Voice Expert, Diane Giuffre

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!

People have been asking me ‘What is a SIP Trunk, and why do I want one?’ lately, I imagine as a result of all the positive press SIP Trunks have received lately.  In response, I’ve put together this quick list of 5 facts on SIP Trunks that will hopefully help as you consider your connectivity options

1. What is a SIP Trunk, anyway?

A Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Trunk is a service that connects a company’s PBX to the existing public switched telephone network (PSTN) via the Internet by making use of  the SIP standard. 

3. There is a lot of talk these days about ‘Hosted VOIP’. Why would a business choose a SIP trunk over such a service?

This question really comes down to whether you want a telephony service that is physically located at your business, or whether you want to completely outsource your telephony needs.  Many businesses want the security and reliability of a premise based PBX, as it allows for greater control.  SIP Trunks are perfect for these customers, offering them a technicaly sound solution and cost savings at the same time.

4. Wait a minute, did you say a SIP Trunk will also get me Internet access?

A SIP Trunk uses IP to deliver phone calls to the PSTN.  Depending upon the volume of calls placed, any excess bandwidth not being utilized for VoIP can be used to access the Internet.  By moving to a product like DUET from a traditional PRI, you may find that not only do you save money on your phone bill, but on your Internet access bill as well.

5. What hardware do I need to make use of SIP Trunks?

You will need to have a PBX that is capable of connecting to a SIP Trunk.  There are many of these on the market, from custom turn-key solutions, to open source solutions that many businesses implement themselves.  When you work with your SIP provider, they will be able to tell you if your current PBX is compatible with this money-saving service.