Prognosis delivers management software for Avaya IP communications environments

New IP telephony management software expands Prognosis suite beyond 7-year heritage of Cisco-only to support both Avaya and Cisco

Integrated Research today announced the official launch of Prognosis IP Telephony Manager 9.0, the company’s first management solution that supports Avaya IP communications technology and also can support multi-vendor environments where Avaya and Cisco Unified CallManager systems co-exist.

Prognosis IP Telephony Manager is a specialized management tool that fills a gap not covered by traditional PBX administration, network management and event management tools.  Since its introduction in 2000, Prognosis IP Telephony Manager has been chosen to manage hundreds of Cisco-based enterprise and managed service provider (MSP) environments, including 7 of the world’s 10 largest.

For homogeneous Avaya environments, Prognosis IP Telephony Manager 9.0 provides real-time monitoring and management in three major areas:

• Voice quality
• Device status and utilization
• Device performance and fault notification

For a mixed Avaya-Cisco environment, the benefits of using Prognosis IP Telephony Manager 9.0 include the ability to:

• Give operations staff a single, unified view across all their disparate IP telephony environments
• Eliminate the need to procure and maintain multiple IP telephony management tools
• Reduce the time and expense involved in training staff to use differing solutions

MSP clients also benefit by being able to extend a common service-level offering to all of their customers, regardless of their IP communication platform.

“To manage an IP communications environment effectively, enterprises and MSPs need a specialized solution that addresses IP telephony as a real-time, end-to-end application,” said Nathan Brumby, general manager of voice over IP (VoIP) and IP telephony products for Integrated Research.  “This is particularly true in Avaya-based converged networks given the longevity of Avaya and its predecessor companies in enterprise communications.  Convergence in the Avaya environment is a far greater paradigm shift than just IP telephony instead of TDM – in many cases it’s the convergence of decades of separation between telephony and IT.”

Prognosis IP Telephony Manager delivers value
Prognosis provides the following key benefits in order to improve the cost effectiveness of the business and the productivity and job satisfaction of those who support it.

• Reduced trouble tickets: A real-time view of voice quality and service delivery status provides pre-emptive insight into the critical factors that can cause problems.
• Reduced mean time to repair:  Diagnostic tools provide insight into the origin of issues, be it a phone, a call leg, a specific media board, or individual channel, allowing the helpdesk to sort and assign tasks, reducing rote investigation and mean time to repair.
• Optimized resource utilization: The ability to correlate configuration and resource utilization ensures the reliability and efficient use of media servers, trunks and gateways.
• Reduced operating costs: Predicting the possibility of problematic network hops or over-utilized channels prevents outages that have a material impact on expenses.  Knowledge of underutilized trunks leads to the cancellation of these channels and the monthly costs associated with them.
• Understand capacity requirements: Historical data allows administrators to perform trend analysis and capacity planning to limit unnecessary equipment purchases.

Easy installation and broad Avaya support
Prognosis IP Telephony Manager 9.0 is installed on a Windows (2003, XP, 2000) server.  Prognosis connects to the Avaya environment securely via a System Access Terminal (SAT) interface, which gives Prognosis read-only access to the system’s administrative and maintenance functions. 

Additionally, within the Communication Manager configuration, Prognosis is designated as the real-time transport control protocol (RTCP) monitor, which allows Prognosis to receive the RTCP reports that each IP phone and media gateway in the environment generate.

Prognosis IP Telephony Manager 9.0 supports the following Avaya equipment:

Pricing
Prognosis IP Telephony Manager 9.0 is priced on a per-phone basis for both enterprise and managed service provider customers.  List pricing begins at $50 per phone with discounts applied based on volume and duration of the license term.