The quest to simplify business communications, enhance individual and group productivity, and achieve cost savings has led to an expanding interest in unified communications by organizations of all sizes. Unified communications (UC) integrates diverse communication and collaboration technologies, allowing people to more easily and effectively connect to colleagues and information through the myriad of communication methods and devices available.

However, while most enterprises want to take advantage of the benefits of unifying their voice, messaging, conferencing and communications systems, many would like to avoid the operational burdens and capital expenses of deploying and supporting these services on their own. Increasingly, enterprises are looking to outsource to service providers offering managed or hosted UC services.

Regardless of who the UC provider is (managed service provider, hosted service provider, or the enterprise itself), the delivery of high-quality UC services that satisfy end users is paramount. But ensuring high-quality unified communications requires effective performance management tools that address the challenges of the UC services environment, including:

• Keeping the quality of the user experience high and maintaining each customer’s expected service levels
• Monitoring a complex and interdependent UC infrastructure
• Properly managing and reporting on the many customers serviced in the managed or hosted UC services environment
• Getting visibility into the service performance delivered to a specific business’s organizational hierarchy – their divisions and locations
• Understanding changing utilization patterns for effective service growth and resource planning

InfoVista offers a comprehensive yet cost-effective unified communications assurance solution that addresses these challenges and the requirements for performance management in the sophisticated UC services environment. Encompassing proactive monitoring, real-time troubleshooting, performance reporting, capacity management functions, alerting, and a multi-tenant architecture, InfoVista’s UC product suite equips managed and hosted service providers and enterprise IT alike with the information needed to effectively manage the performance of unified communications for their many service recipients and ensure that they are providing a high-quality user experience.