Harness the power of your network for unmatched collaboration performance

Collaboration tools such as video, web conferencing and live sharing have exploded, making it difficult for IT to provide a good user experience. Indeed, these new applications often span beyond the local LAN network or even customer WAN networks into remote cloud application servers.

Collaboration services such as Allstream Webex or Allstream SIP trunking service must always work, but also work with the highest level of quality to ensure a good customer experience. Yet, tools are lacking to optimize performance and provide real-time performance monitoring with simple troubleshooting ability.

Collaboration tools

With Allstream IT CloudView powered by Cisco Meraki, it is now possible to not only prioritize traffic on your network, but also gain instant visibility into issues. IT CloudView Insight’s module learns what is normal for your own network environment (baseline of packet loss, jitter, etc.) and alerts you instantly by email in case of an issue.

Not only that, but it will help you quickly pinpoint whether it’s an issue on your internal network (LAN), WAN network (Internet or IP-VPN/VPLS) or on the server side. What used to take IT administrators many hours of painstaking data collection and analysis is now done in seconds right from the IT CloudView dashboard.

Collaboration applications provide a tremendous impact on the way business is conducted, improving communication within and between businesses anywhere and through virtually any device. Our reliance on these collaboration tools has made them business-critical applications where any downtime means loss of revenue, degraded customer experience and lost productivity.

When Allstream IT CloudView is purchased with the SD-WAN option, Allstream will deploy the Insight module that uses the IT CloudView Security Appliance to establish that baseline, track application performance and alert you of the issue before users notice any application impact.

Allstream collaboration applications such as Allstream Unified Communication Cloud Voice (UCCV) and Webex will be pre-populated and email alerts will be set up. You are then able to pinpoint any issues quickly and address it with the proper team right away.

The problem

In today’s world, many applications are distributed across a wide array of locations leading to a heterogenous or hybrid deployment model. Some applications are located on-site (LAN), some applications are in a customer owned data center across a WAN connection (Fiber, MPLS/IP-VPN/VPLS, SD-WAN or Internet) while others are on a private or public cloud across a WAN link that often does not have guaranteed end-to-end quality of service (QoS).

While some delays in email delivery—for example, to a Microsoft Office 365 public data center or Google Gmail server on the Internet—might be acceptable, it is another matter entirely for collaboration applications in a phone or data center with instant messaging and presence such as Allstream UCCV, Webex or SIP Trunking service.

Two primary concerns arise when live, business-critical collaboration applications are used. First, IT administrators must monitor the performance of applications. Second, if an issue arises, simple tools must be available to quickly pinpoint the issue across a wide array of elements such as local site LAN issues, WAN network problems or performance issues on the server side at the remote data center, whether it is private or public cloud.

How do you then create an accurate picture of what is good performance, specifically for each of your sites? That requires the creation of a “baseline” or reference measure.

Ideally, you want tools to automatically measure critical KPI metrics across the LAN, WAN and servers and update that “normal” performance over time to avoid false alarms. Your baseline can then be used to identify “unusual” performance issues that significantly deviate from the baseline seen in the recent past and also pinpoint whether an issue is local (LAN), linked to the WAN or on the application side.

The solution

With IT CloudView at each of your sites, you get instant visibility into the health of your network through the dashboard. The IT CloudView Security Appliance sits between your LAN and WAN, and the SD-WAN modules constantly monitor application performance through the Insight module.

Allstream’s IT CloudView Security Appliance combined with SD-WAN gives you live application performance monitoring, establishes a baseline of normal LAN, WAN and application server response times and alerts you in case of unusual behavior.

Allstream can also set up any Allstream collaboration applications such as Webex, Unified Communication Cloud Voice (HCS/MiCloudUCCV) and Allstream SIP. This allows you to monitor collaboration application performance and have the tools at your fingertips to quickly pinpoint issues, keep users and management in the know and work with the proper team or vendor to fix issues quickly.

For more information, please visit:

Allstream IT CloudView
Allstream Collaboration Services
Meraki Insight Module

Image: CreativaImages/iStock