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NetQoS has released version 2.0 of its voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) Monitor product, which has been renamed as NetQoS Unified Communications (News - Alert) Monitor.

 

A network-based monitoring product, NetQoS Unified Communications Monitor tracks the voice and video quality. In addition, it provides alerts on call performance problems, and isolates performance issues to speed troubleshooting and mean time to repair.

 

For the Microsoft (News - Alert) Office Communications Server 2007 environment, NetQoS in version 2.0 has added support for voice and video quality metrics. In addition, it has also enhanced diagnostics and reporting for Cisco (News - Alert) IP telephony environments.

 

The enhanced diagnostics and reports helps better monitor VoIP performance across the converged network, said company officials.

 

Office Communications Server 2007 adoption is easy to deploy as an extension of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. In addition, Jim McQuaid, director of product management at NetQoS, said it coexists within a PBX (News - Alert) or IP PBX environment.

 

NetQoS Unified Communications Monitor v2.0 reports on voice—both narrow band and wideband. Also in a Microsoft unified communications environment, it reports in video.

 

The updated monitor receives quality metrics directly from Microsoft’s quality of experience (QoE) monitoring server, which enables it to report on end-user experience and also eliminates the need for additional collection devices.

 

In the latest version of this VoIP Monitor product, additional enhancements include automatic investigations; automatic and proactive notification of problems; enhanced support for MSP environments.

 

For user-reported call quality problems, Unified Communications Monitor now provides automatic investigations. Officials said that when a user presses the quality reporting tool (QRT) softkey on their IP phone indicating a call quality problem, the monitor launches a

Call Watch investigation automatically.

 

Call Watch reports troubleshooting information about the phone and the call quality metrics.

 

Officials said that the updated version of Unified Communications Monitor extends its approach to proactive monitoring, and includes notification of call server problems.

 

Moreover, Unified Communications Monitor now also includes group-based permissions and reporting. This feature groups locations and data according to geographic or functional characteristics, said officials.