Lucent Technologies VitalSuite Software: An Effective Tool for Optimizing Voice Over IP Services

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1 PRODUCT VIEW November 2003 Lucent Technologies VitalSuite Software: An Effective Tool for Optimizing Voice Over IP Services Executive Summary Voice over IP (VoIP), the idea of voice communications traveling over the Internet rather than on the public-switched telephone network (PSTN), was first demonstrated in Originally dismissed as a novelty, VoIP in particular, and Internet telephony in general, have gained momentum steadily over the years, but nothing like the explosive growth of the Internet itself. While it s easy to be seduced by its inherent economics of transport, ease of configuration, and cost effectiveness, VoIP remains larger in potential than it is in reality. As with any new technological approach, it has taken time for the marketplace to address issues surrounding VoIP infrastructure requirements, migration costs, business process changes, implementation scenarios, and concerns over VoIP standardization. Although not all of these issues have been identified, much less settled, the service provider industry has pushed aggressively for VoIP adoption. Meanwhile, there has been significant activity in this area at the enterprise level. That s because the market potential is enormous. Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) projections indicate that VoIP could represent a $200 billion worldwide market by 2007, which includes significant amounts of enterprise spending. In its research on this market, EMA has found that acceptance, sales, and deployment of VoIP systems is directly dependent on the acceptance, sales, and deployment of VoIP management systems. In other words, technology is adopted in direct proportion to the availability of effective tools to monitor, manage, and control the actual deployment of the technology. Availability, performance, and quality of service are key. The telling statistics from EMA research indicate that while 79% of enterprise IT organizations view unified messaging as a primary driver for VoIP services, network management and application management are viewed as the principal challenges by 76% and 55% of enterprise IT organizations, respectively. As IT matures, it will become clear that VoIP is an application service even more so than a network service. Convergence of IP-based services such Internet telephony means that voice, video, music, and other media now share the enterprise data infrastructure, along with ERP, database, productivity, and vertical-specific applications. Each of these applications has similar needs for performance management. As a result, enterprises demand real-time performance management tools for VoIP as for any other Web-enabled service. Network and event management, plus reporting, are prerequisites, but real-time application management of all infrastructure, application, and service delivery resources via a Web portal interface has become the Holy Grail. As a recognized expert on telephony, Lucent Technologies is a logical source of effective, reliable VoIP solutions for enterprises and service providers alike. In this white paper, EMA focuses on the key network management challenges enterprises face when deploying VoIP services. This paper also describes how Lucent s VitalSuite network and application performance management software addresses these needs. Leveraging its strong data collection technology, Lucent expects to further expand VitalSuite software into VoIP at the enterprise as well as service provider level. Market Drivers Enterprise VoIP is gaining traction because it delivers clear benefits, but migrating to VoIP remains a no pain, no gain decision. Not surprisingly, then, EMA s research shows that the lack of effective management has been the single most significant roadblock to widespread adoption of VoIP systems. This covers issues such as deployment, integration, expertise, and features of management software needed for successful deployment. Virtually 100% of enterprise IT organizations interviewed by EMA believe that management is either critical or important for VoIP to get beyond readiness assessments and test beds, 2003 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc.

2 and become a fully-integrated part of the production environment. But why go through the pain? EMA s research shows that enterprises look to VoIP as a way to: Reduce telephony expenses, such as long distance Improve customer service through better integration of services Improve productivity, also through better integration of services Leverage existing physical infrastructure Enhance revenues by offering additional services and features Reduce staffing and operating costs On the other hand, enterprises still evaluating whether to move to VoIP cite the following barriers in addition to the need for management: Current technology solutions are inadequate Cost issues or lack of budget No need for convergence-related applications, such as unified messaging Limited potential revenue Lack of VoIP expertise Need to understand how network performance affects voice quality Integration concerns with traditional circuit-switched voice systems Inadequate voice quality Consistent with the primary VoIP market driver cited earlier, the enterprise decision to deploy VoIP generally comes down to the ability to integrate VoIP management with existing management software. Cost, ease of use and comprehensive management features are other significant factors in the adoption decision. More specifically, among enterprises planning to migrate to VoIP, or those already at that point, the most important VoIP management criteria are: Scalability Cost savings/productivity increases ROI Integration with legacy equipment Adherence to standards There are numerous software solutions today that do a good job monitoring the operational status of converged network resources, a key component of availability and service level quality. However, introducing VoIP into an enterprise environment requires managing and tracking the actual behavior of VoIP events plus existing enterprise application services and networked services. This is the job of performance management software. This specialized software generally is a value-added overlay to a company s installed network, system, and/or application management software. Real-time performance management is a particularly challenging goal, but an absolute requirement for VoIP deployment. Most enterprises have separate domains for voice and data services and applications, leading to costly and inefficient implementation of parallel management environments. As EMA s research shows, enterprises want to reduce costs, and add integrated services by using one management tool for VoIP and other enterprise applications and services. The problem in finding one tool for both voice and data environments is that managing voice traffic is not the same as managing data. Slow response time for an enterprise application may be an issue, but at least the program is still running. IP telephony specifically, and rich media in general, is a binary go/no-go proposition. It s either working fine or it s not working at all severely disrupting service. As vital as performance management is for IT applications, it is absolutely mission-critical for voice services. Many vendors claim to collect performance data in realtime, but providing real-time management capabilities remains a challenge for most. User interfaces and reporting systems often are neither user friendly nor sufficiently granular. Delivering systems that provide the scalability to accommodate growth in network size and the introduction of new technologies and business models poses an ongoing challenge for performance management vendors. For this reason, the performance management market has so far reflected a tendency to view VoIP as a niche environment, with specialized vendors and specialized solutions. This has resulted in a fragmented approach to VoIP introduction, with a mix of network infrastructure vendors, niche independent software vendors (ISVs), and more mainstream infrastructure management vendors with often limited functionality and token capabilities relevant to VoIP. Also, because of natural market pressures, many VoIP management capabilities to date have focused on readiness assessments rather than integrated, production-level monitoring and management. Lucent Technologies has designed its VitalSuite performance management software to address these requirements for real Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. November 2003 Page 2

3 time infrastructure and VoIP performance management in context with broader infrastructure control. A detailed description of the product features and benefits is provided in the next session of this report. Product Description The VitalSuite portfolio is a family of modular software components that manages performance and predicts behavior of IT and Internet telephony infrastructure resources, services, and network and application-based business processes at both the enterprise and service provider levels. The modules include VitalNet, VitalApps and VitalART. At the core of the suite is VitalNet, which analyzes and reports on service quality of the network infrastructure across a wide range of devices. VitalApps provides an extensible platform for common and custom applications performance from the end-user perspective. VitalART, an optional, advanced reporting toolkit; offers more sophisticated reporting capabilities that can be tailored to the needs of individual users. Besides core functionality, VitalSuite design reflects the need for return on investment. Modular licensing of the VitalSuite components gives users a choice in implementation time frame. In addition, the ability of VitalSuite to coexist with existing management systems (e.g., HP OpenView, CA Unicenter, IBM Tivoli Configuration and Operation) and infrastructure components helps to reduce long-term costs of ownership. Furthermore, VitalSuite helps simplify capacity planning and budget analysis by providing a single portal for centralized management of network, application, and service performance and quality. A closer look at the VitalSuite components follows, with emphasis on aspects that are critical to VoIP deployment and management. Primary areas of VitalSuite functionality are summarized in Figure 1, along with how these features compare with the industry norm. VitalNet Network Performance Management Software The VitalNet platform is designed to support users throughout the network management organization. By collecting granular statistics from SNMP-manageable devices, VitalNet can be a valuable tool for network engineers and operations staff. By analyzing utilization, availability, and error statistics, VitalNet can validate service levels to ensure appropriately sized WAN circuits and PVCs. Capacity planners can also use VitalNet to proactively predict and prioritize which key network resources require upgrades to preempt problems before applications are impacted. Flexible reporting capabilities are designed to support the needs of technical staff and IT management, as well as business executives who recognize the company s bottom line depends on overall enterprise network performance. Lucent has incorporated VoIP support, among other network services, initially for the Cisco VoIP environment. VitalNet collects call data records from the Cisco Call Manager (CCM) to provide a broad range of call statistics including call attempts, successful versus failed calls, call minutes, etc. In addition, VitalNet collects statistics from Cisco IP telephony equipment, such as gateway interface utilization, registered phone status and errors. VitalNet also supports QoS monitoring, relying on the facilities of the Cisco Service Assurance Agent (SAA). SAA enables active tests to be executed to monitor jitter, latency, dropped packets and other network metrics that directly affect voice call quality. VitalNet thresholding capabilities enable compound exceptions to be flagged and correlated against historical norms. Periodic and on-demand reports may be generated to meet needs across the organization. VitalART Advanced Reporting Toolkit Software VitalART is a Web-based reporting tool that includes a wizard-based report generation facility. With VitalART, users gain a flexible formatting tool to generate customizable, presentation-quality reports and graphs built from data extracted from VitalNet. The software can access all VitalNet data sets, domain, and group definitions, and automatically discovers new data added. Continuing with the example of CCM devices, VitalART can report on such activity as number of calls attempted, percentage of successful calls, call quality of service (e.g., good/ fair/poor); categorization of top causes of failed calls; and average or median latency and jitter. Reports can be generated on any frequency necessary: daily, weekly, monthly, every x days, by time of day, etc. This capability reflects not only a core requirement for VoIP in the near term, but also a broader requirement for modeling service usage and behavior across all critical business applications. Lucent should be well positioned to evolve solutions that reflect this confluence, as within the next two to five years VoIP will invariably drive an expectation for more automated and granular modeling of service usage and accountability across all enterprise applications. November 2003 Page 3

4 VitalApps Application Performance Management Software VitalApps is performance optimization and fault management software that monitors transactions that span VoIP events from the desktop to the network/internet destination server. Aggregation algorithms developed by Bell Labs merge thousands of transactions into reports on overall system health and potential problems. VitalApps has embedded VitalAgent client software that pinpoints application-related problems on desktops, notebooks and servers along with IP phones, IP PBXs and IP gateways. With VitalApps, NOC and help desk staff can drill down to identify, diagnose, and resolve application performance problems. VitalApps also provides visibility into remote access performance and availability, including busy signals, modem disconnects and modem connect speeds. Statistical analysis of performance data reveals unusual or exceptional events that might otherwise be overlooked. Using the MyVital Web portal, customers receive personalized views of end-to-end VoIP, application, and network performance. VitalSuite heat charts and summary reports isolate trouble spots, and the customizable drill-down MyReports tool can focus on specific applications and end users. Product Summary VitalSuite is a richly functional performance management solution for production-level enterprise applications and IP telephony services. It allows for centralized management of network, application, and service quality via the Web-based MyVital portal. It pre-empts network and application problems before users are affected, and maximizes network uptime by efficiently tracking problems to their source. Its breadth of functionality in particular, its ability to address VoIP requirements across both the network and application, in terms of availability, performance, and service usage, and impact position Lucent well to provide a highly competitive approach to managing production-level VoIP environments. Functionality VitalSuite Performance Management Software Other Performance Management Solutions Utility of operator GUI MyVital portal allows personalized views of Displays of performance data not always Webperformance data at a glance enabled; can be difficult to customize Pre-empt problems Performance data for all enterprise data/voice Network, system, and application data typically enterprise-wide resources summarized by application, network, loosely integrated; difficult to gain visibility of event, and alarm full enterprise infrastructure; voice services generally not supported Drill-down reports for Quality-of-service levels displayed in granular Iconic drill-down capability shows status of enhanced analysis, planning heat charts of job-specific information resources, but effective mapping to service quality is rare Centralized management Provides historical and real-time performance Separate management consoles typically needed of network, application, data for centralized control; also manages remote for each domain and environment service quality access activity Proactive fault management Real-time event correlation coupled with performance Event correlation often is cumbersome and very management insight for rapid problem resolution. rarely integrated with performance management Supports critical business Transaction applications are monitored and managed to Application performance data often not easily transactions maximize performance; allows customization of extended to transaction metrics application elements that are measured Ease of deployment, Designed for rapid implementation; integration with Lengthy deployment and poor integration can rapid time to value major management platform often cost far more than software license fees Table 1: Performance Management Software Competitive Comparison 2003 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. November 2003 Page 4

5 EMA s Perspective Strengths VitalSuite is designed to be a comprehensive performance management solution for covering all network, system, application, and IP telephony implementations. It allows users to anticipate and predict application behavior, versus merely being able to monitor network and application activity. This is partly because it provides a relatively comprehensive view vertically, across infrastructure components, as well as geographically, from the client to the application server. The modular packaging and flexible pricing schedule is both easily assimilated and user friendly, and the R&D resources of Bell Labs, should help to strengthen VitalSuite s advantages within the IP telephony market. Lucent has also achieved a high level of acceptance in the service provider market to match its product capabilities. The ability to address both enterprise and service provider markets will become increasingly important in the coming decade, as enterprises evolve to become more like service providers in business model. In the past, IT s focus was essentially on provisioning and support of the hardware/software/ application infrastructure. By offering IP telephony along with a renewed emphasis on service quality and end-user satisfaction, enterprise IT has adopted more of a traditional service provider model. SLAs are an example of this trend. Similarly, service providers are driven to become more like enterprises in the breadth and application-centricity of their services. EMA has already witnessed more than one CIO switching carrier affiliations because of an unwillingness and an inability to share in application commitments. Within VoIP specifically, and across the broader services marketplace, Lucent s ability to provide meaningful cross-infrastructure insights for service providers and enterprises should stand it in good stead, as this need to share becomes a dominant requirement rather than nice-to-have functionality. Challenges While a significant player in the service provider, circuitswitched market, Lucent as a whole has yet to make a significant name for itself in the enterprise space. This is partially due to a skeptical enterprise IT population that sees Lucent as essentially a telecom player, whose solutions tend to be bullet proof but out of the range of enterprise budgets and capabilities to support. And as Lucent moves more heavily into the enterprise, it will need to continue to evolve its VitalSuite solution set to be more focused on enterprise priorities, with enhanced capabilities for traffic flow and application usage analytics, which are, in the end, native to Lucent s core technology strengths. However, Lucent s brand presence in the service provider market could also serve it well in the enterprise, as 55% of enterprises EMA surveyed in a recent report were planning management strategies around VoIP that stipulated a shared approach to outsourced and in-house delivered management. Lucent is counting on continued enterprise adoption of VitalSuite to demonstrate the utility and return on investment its products can deliver to IT organizations. In that regard, the company is specifically ensuring compatibility and value-add with IP products from Cisco, the clear leader in enterprise infrastructures. Cisco claims to have shipped two million IP phones since 1998 and half of those in just the last 12 months. This is further evidence of growth in enterprise VoIP, but with an estimated 100 million circuit-switched phones sitting on Fortune 1000 desks, and millions more in smaller companies and throughout the public sector, a full enterprise-wide adoption of VoIP still has a long way to go. Meanwhile, the noise level in the performance management market is increasing. EMA has so far documented more than 300 vendors in the performance management marketplace alone. While so far the noise around VoIP has been relatively muted due to the niche quality of most VoIP management entrants, suites and frameworks should have at least credible entrants into VoIP management within the coming 18 months. What sets Lucent apart is that it has a head start on this competition as well as a firm grounding in capabilities that require not only a technological but also a cultural grounding in both the enterprise and service provider markets. This is an exceedingly rare advantage in a marketplace where all too often technological innovation becomes shipwrecked through a lack of cultural fluency with market-specific needs, thought patterns, and priorities. Opportunities Despite a growing level of awareness within enterprise IT, Lucent s competitors still lack VitalSuite s ability to manage IP telephony and IT resources in an integrated, real-time manner. What s more, Lucent has a solid story to tell in terms of interoperability and enhanced services with the framework vendors. VitalSuite can co-exist with these platforms to provide real-time, centralized management of network, application, and service quality, thereby holding the potential to transform IT departments into service bureau models with value managed networks. November 2003 Page 5

6 That positioning is in keeping with EMA s enterprise VoIP research, which found that planned deployments included both outsourced services and in-house capabilities in 55% of respondents. This was in contrast to 32% planning purely inhouse management, and 14% focused purely on outsourced capabilities, from carriers and managed service providers and systems integrators. This trend for a versatile, mix-and-match approach between in-house and outsourced management models is consistent with EMA s research on broader market strategies for outsourced services. VitalSuite, in context with Lucent s broader management portfolio, is well adapted to address this trend. Further demand for Vital Suite s capabilities can be expected through the accelerating adoption of Web-based services and Internet telephony applications. These initiatives place a premium on efficient real-time management of networks, applications and service quality from a centralized point of control. This further promises to transform Lucent s carrier-grade heritage from a liability into a potentially significant competitive advantage at the enterprise level. VitalSuite s ability to address the total network and application structure as a context for managing VoIP is also a critical value. EMA research on IT organizational evolution reflects not only a shift towards new technology investments, but cultural, process, and organizational transformation as well, as IT struggles to consolidate and create new efficiencies. One of the most pronounced areas of organizational and cultural change relevant to VoIP reflects converging requirements for managing application and network performance with integrated processes and cultures. This ultimately will mean the maturing of VoIP as primarily an application service versus a network service. Such maturation will occur in the coming two to five years, as IT recognizes that VoIP is fundamentally not about the network, but is basically another application, one among many that must be managed dynamically in support of dynamic business requirements. The winning investment here is the solution provider that can assess the impact of VoIP on critical ERP and other business applications, and vice versa, and model business requirements and processes across the entire arsenal of business applications as they map to changing business needs. VitalSuite s strength in both the network and the application arena are supportive of this emerging trend Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. November 2003 Page 6

7 About VitalSuite software and Lucent Technologies VitalSuite Performance Management Software is a key component of the Lucent Network Operations Software portfolio. Lucent offers multivendor, multi-technology, multi-service software solutions developed on extensible, programmable platforms, open APIs and advanced system architectures. These carrier-grade solutions provide the reliability, scalability and flexibility to deliver advanced services across current and next generation networks while improving efficiencies, significantly reducing operating expenses and delivering the Quality of Service that today s enterprise users demand. With more than 10,000 network consultants, engineers, and service professionals around the globe, Lucent Worldwide Services can address any enterprise performance management support requirement. Lucent experts can assess the readiness of a company s current network; and then plan, design, and build solutions that optimize particular environments; integrating Lucent s market-leading software solutions with an enterprise s existing infrastructure; and also provide ongoing maintenance support. To learn more, contact a Lucent Technologies sales representative, authorized reseller or sales agent. Or also visit or call Corporate Headquarters 600 Mountain Ave. Murray Hill, NJ Phone: Web: About Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. is the fastest growing analyst firm focused on the management software and services market. EMA brings strategic insights to both vendors and IT professionals seeking to leverage areas of growth across e-business, network, systems and application management. Enterprise Management s vision and insights draw from its ongoing research and the perspectives of an experienced team with diverse, real-world backgrounds in the IT, service provider, ISV and publishing communities. This report in whole or in part may not be duplicated, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or retransmitted without prior written permission of Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All opinions and estimates herein constitute our judgement as of this date and are subject to change without notice. Product names mentioned herein may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Corporate Headquarters th Street, Suite 110 Boulder, CO Phone: ; Fax: info@enterprisemanagement.com Web: