Tone Software Gaining Channel Acceptance With Heavy-Duty VoIP Monitoring

Converged networks are creating opportunities for the channel around advanced network monitoring and support: that sweet spot where management tools track issues in voice and data networks but also troubleshoot along the way so the transition to the converged network is as smooth as possible.

It's in this market that Tone Software says it has found a hit with ReliaTel, its "single pane of glass" monitoring tool that tracks VoIP network issues to ease enterprise and service provider support concerns. Its flexibility is the key element: the latest release of ReliaTel Streamline Operational Knowledge Base, version 2.6, comes pre-populated with resolution procedures for gear from a wide range of networking vendors.

According to Amit Kapoor, director of strategic technology advancement at Tone Software, the company is now working to expand its channel, adding networking VARs, managed service providers and VoIP specialists alike while broadening ReliaTel releases to support TDM and IP gear from Avaya, Nortel, Cisco, Siemens, NEC, Mitel and a range of others.

Tone also recently made an acquisition in line with those plans, purchasing the Streamline IP Voice Analytics Management Platform from Communicado.

The goal is to be able to offer, through VARs and MSPs, a "management-as-a-service" hosted model that can be used in multi-vendor environments but eliminates traditional maintenance and support costs, too. The ReliaTel model offers monitoring for all those network needs, from data management to call center to various PBX and IP system headaches, from a central location.

Networking and VoIP solution providers are craving that kind of model, Kapoor said, especially when it creates services revenue and supports multi-vendor environments. Equipment mix is no longer an issue, he explained.

Unique Communications Solutions, a Hendersonville, Nev.-based solution provider, became a partner of Tone's about four years ago, when, according to President Len Vanderhoven, the company was looking to broaden its expertise beyond basic configuration management tools.

"Their products were simple from a user interface perspective, and we were looking for something that had fault configuration performance, security and everything else we needed and wrapped that up into a single offering," Vanderhoven said. "Plus, in these different vertical markets you have tons of silos, and folks that are vendor-specific, and this accounts for all of that."

Unique recently received certification from the Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC) division of the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency for its Configuration Accounting Informational Retrieval System, which incorporates Tone's ReliaTel.

"We'd been limited in the past, but having Tone Software's products in our product offerings helped us get that certification. It's a very difficult certification to succeed in getting it allows us to attack the DOD [Department of Defense] market much more aggressively," Vanderhoven said.