Communicado Currents

With Gnarls Out and Ease of Use Needed, Microsoft's UC Entry Makes Sense ... But What About Managing UC?

In this thoughtful post, InfoWorld's Sean Gallagher says Microsoft waited until most of the gnarls were out of Unified Communciations technology and will bring some much-needed ease of use to the productivity tools that ride on top.  All true ... to a point.  When anyone can click to start a video conference call on a business network, interdependent technology from Microsoft and several other vendors needs to work flawlessly under stress. Communicado is certain that a little cross-silo management is in order here to help resolve the inevitable issues ... not to mention some rearchitecting of networks that were not designed for the stress of whatever VoIP is already there (let alone what Microsoft UC layers on top).

End-to-End QoS is Necessary but not Sufficient

In this interesting post, Network Instruments' Rick Kingsley says finding VoIP problems requires tracking QoS end-to-end on the LAN and WAN with an analyzer.   Kingsley is dead to rights on needing an end-to-end view and looking for sudden change. To take it the next step requires being able to go back in time and correlate device, QoS and Layer 7 metrics to understand the cause of the problem.  Finally, you'll find it useful to be able to share that view with the NOC in control of the WAN if that's where the problem is, or get granted access to whatever link in the chain has the problem.  Thus those features in Streamline.