CORE NEWS FACTS

• In March 2008, Aberdeen Group surveyed 159 organizations to identify best practices for managing Voice-over-IP performance.
• Three key performance criteria were used to distinguish best-in-class companies: 1) average improvement in VoIP service quality; 2) average improvement in VoIP service availability; 3) improvements in ability to troubleshoot issues with VoIP performance in a timely manner.
• Best-in-class organizations reported 93% improvement in VoIP service quality; 95 percent average improvement in VoIP service availability; all improved their ability to troubleshoot VoIP performance issues expeditiously.

Survey results show that firms enjoying best-in-class performance share common characteristics:

• Twice as likely to have tools in place for troubleshooting call failures compared to "laggards"
• Four-times more likely to be measuring call quality on a per-call basis as compared to laggards
• Four-times more likely to have the ability to assess the impact of other business applications on VoIP performance as compared to laggards

The survey concludes that key enablers for “laggard” and “industry average” organizations to achieve best-in-class VoIP performance include:

• Tools for prioritization of network traffic
• Tools for troubleshooting call failures
• Alerts for issues with VoIP performance
• Unified platform for managing VoIP and overall network performance
• Tools for auto discovery of VoIP configuration changes

PACKETEER RESPONSE

• With a new generation of mature, reliable solutions, VoIP is once again building market momentum. As vendors and customers begin to implement strategies to move from a traditional TDM-based circuit-switched PBX to a converged IP voice and data network, an increasing number of enterprise organizations are trying to understand how their existing network can handle the convergence of voice and data traffic without compromising performance and reliability.
• There are many variables that can impact VoIP quality and reliability, including the networking equipment used to carry voice and data traffic, the amount of bandwidth available to all sites and users, and the total amount of traffic moving across the network. The most significant point of congestion and potential compromise to voice quality is at the LAN/WAN boundary where voice and data transmissions are far more bandwidth-constrained. Packeteer is focused on carefully controlling traffic at this congestion point with Intelligent Service Assurance (InSA)-based application delivery systems that enable companies to ensure optimal performance of voice and data applications across the WAN.
• WAN application delivery leader Packeteer provides all of the tools described in the Aberdeen survey to enable organizations to achieve best-in-class VoIP performance. More information on Packeteer’s voice and video solutions is available at http://www.packeteer.com/solutions/voip.cfm.