Case Studies

• Communications Products
  • ReliaTel Convergence Management
  • ReliaTel VoIP QoS Management
  • ReliaTel Performance Reporting
  • ReliaTel PBX Monitoring
• Mainframe Products
  • OMC-FLASH JES Management
  • DYNA-STEP Library Management
  • OMC Network Print Management
  • ACC Host Console Automation
  • SyBridge Host System Automation

ReliaTel Helps AdvanTel Networks Achieve New Highs in Client Satisfaction...

AdvanTel Networks' Service Offering Gains over 95% Client Satisfaction Ratings with ReliaTel...

Headquartered in San Jose, California, AdvanTel Networks is a leading provider of voice and data network services, including design, implementation, and ongoing maintenance of high-end business networks. Serving both SMB and Enterprise corporate environments for over 25 years, AdvanTel’s skilled network engineers are distributed throughout the United States to support their domestic and international clients’ advanced communications infrastructures.

Not surprisingly, AdvanTel’s voice engineers rely on state-of-the-art technologies to deliver remote maintenance services that ensure voice network quality, performance, and service levels for their clients—and with satisfaction ratings of over 95%, their success is undeniable.

Business Problem

Stellar client satisfaction is a key component of AdvanTel's competitive edge—so when their existing remote monitoring and management technology became inefficient and cumbersome, AdvanTel knew a change was needed. Their existing tool performed periodic polling of managed devices for alarms, and then faxed the alarm information to AdvanTel engineers—an inefficient process that delayed notification, significantly extended response times, and negatively impacted maintenance service agreements.

Network Management Challenge

Having made the decision to replace their existing management tool with a proactive, comprehensive solution, AdvanTel established an aggressive requirements list. As an Avaya Platinum Partner that also partners with Cisco, Mitel, Juniper, Adtran, AT&T and Extreme, AdvanTel needed a management solution that supported a huge population of multi-vendor TDM and VoIP network technologies. The solution also had to scale to handle the sheer size of their clients’ large, dynamically changing network environments. Further, the chosen solution had to provide key monitoring, management, and service assurance features, including:

• Advanced alert engine with automatic notification of network issues: Multiple methods of alarm notification delivery had to be available including text, email, voice and pager. And, because AdvanTel service engineers were distributed across various regions, robust notification escalation was required.
• Powerful historical trending and analysis features for device health monitoring: Deep reporting and analysis functionality was necessary to enable AdvanTel to monitor historical trends, and identify those devices prone to frequent alarms and problems. Through trending reports, AdvanTel would offer value-added services, which proactively uncovered client network problems before they became operational issues that threatened voice network services.
• Customizable, web-based management interface with customer-specific network views: From a single web management portal administered by AdvanTel, each client needed the ability to securely view their own network status and historical activity—without visibility of, or impact to, other clients’ networks.
• Capability to manage both voice and data elements of converged voice networks: Because AdvanTel’s service offerings support converged communications from Avaya, Cisco, Mitel, and others, the solution had to comprehensively monitor and manage TDM, VoIP, IP Telephony, and data-related network devices commonly found in converged communications environments.

Technology Solution

With their requirements established, AdvanTel diligently evaluated possible network management solutions, but the team soon found that none of these products met all of AdvanTel’s needs. Next, they evaluated the ReliaTel Monitoring and Management solution from Tone Software and were immediately impressed with its power and flexibility to monitor and manage TDM, VoIP, and IP voice network devices from Avaya, Cisco, Mitel and others.

During the evaluation, ReliaTel’s advanced alerting engine and robust notification capabilities provided AdvanTel engineers with the critical advanced warning needed to get in front of client problems – delays in alarm notification would no longer jeopardize maintenance service agreements. ReliaTel notified support staff via multiple media methods and demonstrated powerful escalation capabilities to forward alarms to alternative engineers if the alarms could not be handled immediately by the primary engineer.

The solution also addressed other crucial AdvanTel requirements including:

• Web access that allowed clients to view their own networks without impact to other clients.
• Strong trending and analysis reports to identify problem patterns, enabling AdvanTel to address issues proactively as a value-added service within maintenance contracts.
• Flexibility to re-brand the ReliaTel management interface, allowing AdvanTel to fully integrate the solution into their VantagePoint service offering.

In all, ReliaTel offered AdvanTel key features that were not available in other products, and provided tremendous value to support their growing service offering for the converged communications market.

Business Result

With the selection and implementation of ReliaTel, AdvanTel’s maintenance contracts represent a strong advantage when competing for new business. Through ReliaTel, response time for client network management and maintenance is better than ever, and AdvanTel engineers can operate much more efficiently knowing they’ll be rapidly notified of client issues "anytime" - "anywhere".

Through the ReliaTel reporting and analysis functionality, AdvanTel now has the tangible information needed to proactively identify problem areas in their clients’ networks, and take action to prevent critical problems before they impact their clients’ business. As a result, the AdvanTel service level agreement is now considered one of the strongest in the industry, and client satisfaction levels are at an all time high.