New tool to ease shift to cloud-delivered communications via Microsoft Office 365
Performance management software provider IR has released a new suite of experience management capabilities as part of its unified communications solution, designed to help organisations implement cloud-delivered communications with Microsoft Office 365.
"With the advent of true cloud-delivered unified communications within the context of Office 365, performance management becomes a critical deployment requirement," the company explains. "Complete visibility of network, applications and infrastructure through and post transition is a key component of successful performance management.
Industry analyst firm Gartner says regardless of whether a VoIP/UC environment is self-managed or maintained via a third party, VoIP/UC-specific monitoring tools are a fundamental prerequisite to the success of any VoIP/UC project.
IR says communications technology leaders and the deployment options they offer can no longer be limited to on-premises implementation. "They must be able to handle today's environment and support these future imperatives of cloud-based and hybrid environments," it says.
The company says organisations deploying Office 365 and Skype for Business face several complexity and multi-vendor integration challenges in order to achieve full control and visibility as they shift to cloud-delivered unified communications.
"IR Prognosis will provide organisations with a clear path to Office 365 success through ongoing performance management and optimisation of their applications, network and communication infrastructure," the company says.
"Importantly, Prognosis dashboards offer real-time visibility of user experience so that support departments can proactively resolve issues while calls are still active.
Since Microsoft announced its advanced cloud-delivered communications intentions through Office 365 in 2013, organisations have been moving one step closer to fully cloud-based unified communication delivery, IR says.
The benefits of unified communications via Office 365 are enticing, enabling advanced concepts such as Cloud PBX, PSTN Dial-In Conferencing and ultimately PSTN Voice.
"These advanced offerings, available via Microsoft's new enterprise E5 bundle as well as á la carte on top of current Office 365 enterprise bundles, promise significant advantages around operational simplicity and cost savings," the company explains.
Prognosis helps customers by delivering a comprehensive 'current state of communications' benchmark, full network assessment to make sure that a company is ready for an Office 365 deployment plus proactive scenario testing and continuous collection of data from the current and future state environment.
Additionally, Prognosis's suite of capabilities, which support Microsoft SDN API 2.2, provides best-of-class insight into Office 365 adoption and utilisation through unparalleled visibility into the cloud-based network.
"Communications technology leaders and the deployment options they offer can no longer be limited to on-premises implementation; they must be able to handle today's environment and support these future imperatives of cloud-based and hybrid environments," explains Darc Rasmussen, CEO, IR.
"The immense growth and sizable installed base of the Office 365 productivity suite, and expected rapid growth of cloud-delivered communications within our global customer base proves this and makes this solution offering an important milestone for us," he says.
