Firms having problems with the management and performance of their IP telephony systems could be tempted by new software released today by infrastructure systems giant EMC.

EMC Smarts’ senior global practice manager Tom Griffin said that the packages, Smarts VoIP Performance Manager (VPM) and Smarts VoIP Performance Reporter (VPR), are most relevant to firms replacing vendor legacy PBXes.

“They perform different functions," he said. "Performance Manager gives helpdesks and [network] operation centres, real-time data to help with short term problems, while Reporter analyses the data to help with long-term capacity planning and the ‘traffic load’ profiles over firms IP telephony sites."

The packages are aimed at managed service providers and global enterprises, and give these firms real-time data about voice quality, service availability and telecoms connections. The software also reports on call quality, call volumes, and also route patterns to check service level agreements (SLAs) are met.

Current system support includes Avaya Communications Manager 3, Cisco Unified Communications Manager 5, Cisco Unified CallManager 4, and Cisco CallManager 3.

"Smarts VPM and VPR easily integrates with other third-party management systems – but we’d use our system integration partners and professional services people to do this,” said Griffin.

The packages are available now, with the system priced at about £13 to £18 per phone, depending on volume. EMC expects that most sales will come from enterprise-wide deployments, for instance about 5,000 phones. There is also an annual maintenance fee that includes tech support and software upgrades charged at 18 per cent of the software purchase price.

BT uses EMC Smarts on the UK’s network, and the efficiency of managed service providers delivering IP telephony to firms is the subject of the BT Convergence Services Report for 2007. The report gives some indication of convergence adoption in the UK. All firms surveyed for the report started to adopt some kind of voice and data convergence with 64 per cent having begun using simple VoIP systems. Firms sending voice over their local area network numbered 43 per cent while 36 per cent sent voice over their WAN links. However, the survey counted only 13 per cent of respondents as having adopted a fully converged voice and data network.

The report was based on poll data taken from 250 medium and large-sized public and private sector firms and analysis by market research firm Coleman-Parkes Research in October 2006.