The vebndor says that Mid Beds District Council selected XelorRate software as part of its management plan to provide enhanced citizen services and operational savings by switching from a Mitel circuit-switched PBX to IP telephony. For the plan to be successful, the Council realized that its new Cisco CallManager platform had to consistently deliver realtime communications that were at least as good as the old-style PSTN system it was replacing.
"XelorRate software serves as the foundation of our enterprise-wide quality of service program for voice communications," said Clive Jones, who is responsible for customer service and information technology for the Council. "The software offers a peace of mind, because it guarantees the prioritisation of voice, regardless of what else is happening on the network. This means that our employees and citizens don't experience dropped or poor quality phone calls, even when someone else on the network transmits a large file or initiates a data run with 150,000 tax bills."
In addition, XelorRate software has dramatically reduced the inevitable management headaches from maintaining an effective realtime communications system. The software uses SNMP to automatically discover and map network elements, ports and topology and then configures these elements according to industry best practices and the network equipment provider's reference manual for QoS. By continuously reacting to changes in the network, XelorRate software has simplified network operations and allowed the Council to reduce the technical headcount required to maintain the converged network.
"The dirty little secret is that IT managers don't continually update QoS policies as the network changes or new elements and endpoints are introduced," said Jones. "Without XelorRate software, it would be almost impossible to keep up with all the network changes, especially in our situation where we have employees switching desks, working from remote locations and even working from home on softphones."