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Case StudyTime2Market Ensures High Quality SaaS VoIPfor their Customers
Time2Market Ensures High Quality SaaS VoIP for their CustomersThe Challenge of Delivering HighPerformance VoIP in the CloudEstablished in 2001, T2M is a privately held company deliveringservices via regional office locations across the U.S., with itsheadquarters in Denver, Colorado. T2M’s cloud-hosted VoIPplatform, Cloud Complete , delivers the highest quality voiceexperience possible by using accurate end-to-end networkmonitoring. It is ideally suited for mid-market customers withenterprise-level requirements and exacting expectations. TheCloud Complete platform scales to: Support tens of thousands of users each day Process millions of minutes of call traffic every month Deliver availability and a quality of experience (QoE) thatconsistently meets the “5 Nines” standard of business-class voiceDelivering a high-quality service at this scale required that T2Mfocus on monitoring third-party VoIP services in the cloud, but theysoon realized it was challenging to get a handle on this with all ofthe software component integration across their private networkand the cloud. There were many elements in their solutionincluding T2M’s own hosted solution, Amazon Web Services, andSkype for Business deployments.T2M first started to address this challenge when it becameevident that they could not often pinpoint what was happeningbecause performance data was not readily available for cloudapplication resources. T2M was looking for a holistic viewof not only what’s going on within their customer’s walls,but into any external performance issues up to their carrierdemarcation or Internet connection points. T2M chose toinitially solve for this with its own internal effort. The T2M teamattempted to address these issues by building customizationaround System Center Operations Manager (SCOM), a crossplatform data center monitoring system for operating systemsand hypervisors. But the internal development effort still leftmany external network visibility gaps that impacted their abilityto deal effectively with customer issues and trouble tickets.This network visibility gap led the team to conduct a detailedrequirements analysis of third-party network monitoring tools,in turn leading them to ThousandEyes. 2018 ThousandEyes. All rights reserved.Time2Market LLC, more commonlyreferred to as T2M, delivers worldclass UC and collaboration solutionsto its business customers. T2M isa leading unified communicationsintegrator offering Skype for Business,VoIP, hosted voice, cloud computingand Unified Communications. T2Mprovides a portfolio of supportservices to businesses migrating fromlegacy, on-premise infrastructure to acloud-based solution through networkconsulting, SD-WAN solutions, cloudservices, systems integration, and amanaged services practice.Industry: UC Service ProviderHeadquarters: Denver, ColoradoUse Case: Digital ExperienceManagement, VoIP Monitoring2/5
Time2Market Ensures High Quality SaaS VoIP for their CustomersT2M’s ThousandEyes Use CasesT2M has improved their customer’s experience with severalkey ThousandEyes use cases, starting with onboarding newcustomers. This activity involves assessing the new customer’snetwork topology—such as those with sizeable hub-and-spokenetwork—to get a good understanding of what’s going onbefore T2M turns up their service. T2M uses ThousandEyes toconduct testing across the private and cloud network segmentsto proactively look for and remediate performance concernsand avoid misperceptions and issues on first service turn up.T2M also uses the ThousandEyes solution to show the customerwhat has been remediated. T2M refers to this process as theirCloud Readiness Assessment, a critical component to ensuringVoIP quality from an end customer’s perspective on day one.ThousandEyes also plays a critical role in ongoing customersupport. T2M’s customer support team often has to addressVoIP quality issues as they arise due to changes in networkconnectivity and responsiveness of associated third-partyapplication resources. T2M customers can either be hosted onthe T2M platform or on the customer premise. T2M addresseseither deployment scenario in the customer support use caseby allowing them to deploy ThousandEyes Cloud and EnterpriseAgents quickly. This helps T2M’s support team to monitor thecustomer’s VoIP path so that T2M can collaboratively workthrough the network issues identified with the customer.Continual agent monitoring is the key to ensuring a high-qualityservice for T2M customers.“Just as important as theThousandEyes solutionitself is the relationship wehave with them. A lot oforganizations say they havea close working relationshipwith their vendors, but thatis the reality for us withThousandEyes. Based onour experience they jumpinto what we have uncoveredto help isolate specificcustomer issues.”David HugheyTechnical Account ManagerTime2MarketA third ThousandEyes use case is in-depth performancetroubleshooting on recurring issues. T2M utilizes share linksfrom ThousandEyes to socialize details on the problem.For T2M, this is especially helpful when there is a need foriterative troubleshooting steps with the customer over time.ThousandEyes helps T2M and the customer to mutuallyagree on performance measurements before and afternetwork configurations are made in response to a particularproblem escalation.T2M has also leveraged ThousandEye’s support team in depthexpertise to tackle many other use cases. David Hughey,Technical Account Manager at T2M added “What we’ve foundin working with ThousandEyes is when we get to difficult spots,it’s not just that their solution is a superior product, it’s that thepeople behind it are willing to engage with us, and continue todrive value all the way through and solve our specific problems.” 2018 ThousandEyes. All rights reserved.3/5
Time2Market Ensures High Quality SaaS VoIP for their CustomersT2M Leverages Key ThousandEyesCapabilitiesT2M makes extensive use of ThousandEyesEnterprise Agents. The vast majority are deployedto specifically run voice simulations across wiredand wireless networks wherever Skype forBusiness endpoints are deployed as well as out toT2M’s network. These agents help with MicrosoftO365 and Azure readiness assessments for theircustomers, allowing T2M to simulate a customer’s“nearest” datacenter they are likely to connectinto for Skype for Business services. This kind ofversatility makes it easier for T2M’s support to zeroin on network issues no matter where the customeris. T2M’s legacy server-side monitoring technologycould not be deployed on a Skype for Businessonline server hosted in Microsoft’s datacenter,making it impossible for T2M to assess voice qualityinside of Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure.Another key ThousandEyes feature utilized by T2Mis the calculation of packet-delay variation, and jitterfor VoIP calls. This feature helps T2M to establishinternal voice quality KPIs for measurement of VoIPperformance metrics that help T2M operationsstaff to create a Service Level Agreement (SLA)that exceeds industry guidelines for these metrics.Hughey said, “An overachieving SLA goal ensuresthat T2M customers can count on a high-qualityVoIP phone call without distortion that soundslike a “robot voice.” This approach enables T2Mto set precise voice quality metrics that can exceedtypical MOS scoring and is one key reason why T2Mso heavily relies on ThousandEyes voice simulation.Hughey added, “ThousandEyes calculation of packetdelay variation and jitter is incredibly helpful to establishguidelines that we know we can count on to ensure thehighest possible voice quality for our customers.”ThousandEyes Path Visualization is another essentialfeature for T2M. According to Hughey, “One of ourfavorite features has to be Path Visualization. Beingable to walk our customers through potential carrierrelated issues inside of their network puts it at thetop of our favorite ThousandEyes feature list.” TheT2M team uses Path Visualization to validate what anSD-WAN provider is telling them is going on inside oftheir network. Using Path Visualization, T2M extractsstats on the SD-WAN that prove invaluable whenisolating VoIP path problems. The simplicity that pathvisualization gives is powerful in its ability to isolateVoIP-related network issues.ThousandEyes bandwidth calculator helps to determinethe percentage of available bandwidth on a givenagent-to-server test. Hughey said, “this feature helpswith T2M customers who ask the question—you’retelling me you have a gig of bandwidth, and I’m tellingyou, you are stretching that limit.” T2M can use thebandwidth calculator to assess network bottlenecks inconjunction with call capacity planning, especially onsmaller connections, providing another data point todetermine a customer’s overall call quality.Figure 1: ThousandEyes Path Visualization helps pinpoint the root cause of network quality issues 2018 ThousandEyes. All rights reserved.4/5
Time2Market Ensures High Quality SaaS VoIP for their CustomersLooking to the Future with ThousandEyes—Proactive versus Reactive VoIP ManagementT2M sees a future for more integration with the ThousandEyesVoIP monitoring solution as they evolve their customersupport practices forward to be more proactive. This involvespartitioning data received from agents to report on monitoringfrom a particular customer. A proactive monitoring approachgives the end customer access to a self-service portal so thatthe customer is always engaged with their UC environmentand not just when problems pop up. T2M sees a customer’sproactive management of their UC environment to be thenext level in their support services. Leveraging ThousandEyescapabilities has been incredibly valuable for T2M to grow theirbusiness by attracting and keeping customers.“ThousandEyes is the eyesand ears network monitoringenvironment that we utilizeto see what’s going on in anetwork.”Todd WhislerDirector of MarketingTime2MarketFigure 2: Voice quality scores such as MOS reflect the health of VoIP services across the globeWe Help Leading Companies Thrive in a Connected WorldAbout ThousandEyes201 Mission Street, 17th FloorSan Francisco, CA 94105(415) 231-5674www.thousandeyes.com 2018 ThousandEyes. All rights reserved.ThousandEyes delivers performance visibility from every user toevery application over any network, enabling you to successfullymigrate to the cloud, modernize your WAN and deliver exceptionaldigital experiences.5/5
VoIP-related network issues. ThousandEyes bandwidth calculator helps to determine the percentage of available bandwidth on a given agent-to-server test. Hughey said, “this feature helps with T2M customers who ask the question—you’re telling me you have a gig of bandwidth, and I’m
