The Myths & Realities of the Voice Over IP Network

At bluArc, we often hear customers express their concerns about VoIP. Their concerns typically revolve around reliability and call quality based on VoIP experiences with services that use the Internet for voice services. bluArc empathizes with these concerns––the same concerns motivated us to start bluArc.

The demand is simple: small- and medium-sized business customers are looking for cost-effective and flexible voice and data communication services that can demonstrate the same levels of reliability and call quality as traditional carriers. With a large number of hosted VoIP providers offering services, how does a customer know which is the right one for them? Furthermore, how can they avoid the pitfalls of VoIP solutions that just don’t work?

Simply put, if customers are prepared to trade off rock bottom costs for reliability and quality, bluArc is not the service provider for them. bluArc offers premium hosted business phone and Internet services without trade-offs. So how do we do it? We believe there are five major categories that can differentiate a great service provider like bluArc from all others.

1. Telephone Carrier––All service providers need to connect to a carrier to complete calls to other customers. Many providers interconnect with other carriers via an Internet connection. While this is cost effective and technically easier to do, it is also unreliable and can cause significant issues with voice degradation.

bluArc is one of the only voice providers in Canada that connects with its carrier partner via traditional telephone circuits. This ensures call quality, reliability and unmatched call completion rates with no dropped calls. In addition, bluArc has chosen Bell as its carrier partner due to its high levels of reliability and network ubiquity. For customers, they utilize a major carrier without the cost or complexity of having to deal with one.

2. Service Platform––The service platform is the array of servers and networking equipment that provides calling services such as transfer, hold, voicemail, among others—the core of bluArc's service offering.

Many providers have chosen to use open source platforms which consist of a grab bag of services, but with little or no commercial support. These platforms are complicated to manage because applications are literally developed by anybody who chooses to develop them, often freely shared, and deployed with little or no knowledge as to the impact on the service providers network and, of course, the end customer.

It is with these types of platforms that we often see long duration service outages with no clear resolution path by the provider. For this reason, bluArc made the the decision from day one to use a commercially available and fully supported platform from a company that is a service provider in its own right supporting 60000+ subscribers. This platform has allowed us to maintain carrier grade service up-times.

Additionally, and equally important, is the facility in which some providers house their platforms. Many other service providers house these platforms in local data centers that have little or no environmental resiliency (power outages, floods, earthquakes, fires) further risking their customers business operations.  bluArc chose to deploy its communications hubs in the same facilities as Bell - and in geographically disparate locations in order to provide the highest levels of resiliency possible to our customers.

3. Last-Mile Networking––This is the broadband connection that service providers use to connect their customers with the service platform. Most service providers either use an existing broadband connection (their own DSL, T1 or fibre service) or provide you with one. In either scenario these providers will have your voice traffic traverse the Internet. This is where customers experience the greatest issues with VoIP.

The Internet is not designed to run voice traffic reliably, securely, and with any guarantee of service quality, period. It is an unreliable mechanism at best and, at worst, a disastrous choice for customers. The solution to the problem is bluArc's private network. By deploying a private network bluArc manages the quality and reliability and is able to pass phone calls directly to Bell’s phone network and thereby avoid the Internet all together. The result is crystal clear calls, full call security, reliability, and end to end network visibility for bluArc technicians.

Many providers will claim a “managed” network, but most of these providers do not and cannot provide and deploy a private network. One test to determine whether or not your service provider is deploying a private network is to ask if the service can support fax and other analog lines on their VoIP service. If the answer is no, you need to ask more questions. Fax and other analog line services are supported on bluArc’s network.

4. Support––Who will be supporting your service if you have questions or issues? At bluArc we are proud to say that we are a hosted business phone and Internet services company. We are not an IT provider that decided to offer voice services––we do not provide IT services. Our support organization consists of nothing but telecommunications professionals with telecommunications backgrounds––most of our staff are certified engineers. Plainly stated, we are voice experts with a telecommunications centric system built by telecommunications engineers. Everything we do is focused on ensuring that our platform is reliable, secure, and offers the highest quality levels in the industry.  Our motto is local and live.

5. Experience––bluArc started in 2005 and has been deploying services since 2006. We have thousands of subscribers on our private network throughout Canada, and are the largest hosted VoIP provider in Ottawa. We have a significant base of customers, many of whom have been with us since day one.

Test us, and invite us in to do a comparison of your current services––with bluArc, we know you will be impressed. Contact us today for a demonstration, and to book your free telecommunications assessment!

Managing bluArc's Private Network

In my last missive I mentioned that we are poised for a major growth push in our core markets.  This brings with it a number of challenges, not the least of which is keeping our network up to snuff to handle not only increased traffic, but also improved resiliency and high availability.  As the size, scope and complexity of our network evolves and grows, so too does the probability that somewhere sometime there will be an equipment failure that has potential to impact service.  Our job is to ensure that when such events occur we can manage them such that the impact to customers is as transparent as we can make it, as we work behind the scenes to remedy the situation.

When I look back at our original network, it becomes apparent how far we've come.  Our major concentration points in Ottawa and Toronto were re-architected to support growth over the past few years, and we're no sooner there and we're opening the hood again to boost resiliency and maintainability.  Experience shows that this will be a never ending task as we continue to evolve so that we can grow our services and geographical footprints, and interconnect with other service providers.

When it comes right down to it, I have to admit that this reality is one of the things that makes this job so interesting.  Not many weeks go by that we're not asked to do something we've never done before.  No matter how small or large the task, the learning opportunity it affords brings with it both challenge and reward.  It's not that we're going where no network company has gone before, it's just that we've never gone there before, and each time we build out in a new direction the business is strengthened and new opportunities are enabled.  The richness of this experience is enhanced by the special nature of our managed private network.

Now that our on-net footprint has been extended to include customer sites in Vancouver, Edmonton, and Calgary to the west and Brossard and Laval to the east, our customers enjoy voice and data services between their bluArc sites entirely on the bluArc network.  Even their data does not go out over the internet!  The world of private networking offers a vast array of other business opportunities for both bluArc and our customers and partners through potential for enhanced services offerings including cloud services.

Stay tuned for more exciting developments as we round the curve into the second half of 2011!


Brian Parisien

Under The Hood

When I was first asked to write a blog about what goes on behind the scenes in the Operations area of bluArc, my first thought was "who'd want to know?" followed shortly thereafter by "do we really want our customers to know?" :-). When I think about the relationships that we've developed with the vast majority of our customers over the years, it doesn't take long to get comfortable with the idea of sharing with you some of the challenges and triumphs that take place "under the hood".

As this is the first of hopefully many such blogs, a little history is in order. Over 5 years ago when Jay and I signed the first of what would become many contracts to get this show on the road, our challenges were many. Not the least among them was shaking out the little bugs and gremlins that plagued our early internet and DSL services. At that time my Blackberry would emit sonar pings whenever an email came it, and our monitoring systems would alert us to network issues by sending me emails. As soon as the first two or three pings would sound from my Blackberry, everyone in the office would look around pie-eyed, like sailors in a submarine waiting for the depth charges to go off.

Those days are thankfully long gone. We overcame those issues and many others as we sorted through our early growing pains. Fast forward to the more recent past and you see an entirely different set of growing pains. By the way, of all the various kinds of pains there are out there, growing pains are the best kind to have!

Last year when we crossed the cash-flow positive threshold our CFO, Sheldon, asked me what we'd need to do to deliver 300 seats per month. (Last month our Sales crew signed up 282 seats!). Since then we've introduced on-net customer sites all the way out to Vancouver, introduced SIP trunking which allows us to port phone numbers in major rate centers coast to coast, upgraded a number of our servers, and brought our system software up to the latest general availability release. We're in the process of extending our network to link with other service providers to allow for rapid on-net bluArc services deployment in downtown Toronto.

The main issue which faces us in Operations now is bringing in the right tools to automate our processes and improve quality and timeliness of services delivery and support. With more people joining the team both in Sales and Operations, we need a scalable framework that allows team members in all of our offices to move jobs forward and keep current with what's happening with our customers. In 2011 alone our sales team will more than double, and our Operations team will grow by 75%.

This year is our "break-out" year as we gather ourselves for the big shift into second gear. As we make this transition, it is my goal to ensure that we hold onto the culture of maintaining the personal relationships with our customers that has made working in this business so enjoyable. For those of you who are new to bluArc, I hope that you grow to feel the same way too.

Brian Parisien

VoIP, the Dirty Acronym?

In positioning the types of services that BluArc offers I am often reluctant to use the word VoIP. BluArc offers hosted VoIP that actually works, we’ve been doing it successfully for 6 years. However, for those who have had poor experiences with other providers or have heard anecdotal horror stories, VoIP has become a dirty acronym. In fact, for most prospective customers, the acronym VoIP stands for Voice over the Internet – that wild west place where your phone calls may or may not work. If a call does connect, it can crackle, attenuate, and sound like you’re in an echo chamber…or sometimes, sound just fine.

But what if the word VoIP could actually evoke thoughts of high quality voice services with a rich feature set that is cost effective and robust? You probably wouldn’t believe me, would you? Well, you wouldn’t be alone. The single biggest challenge that BluArc faces in converting customers to the BluArc solution is the skepticism around Voice over Internet Protocol. So what do you need to know about BluArc VoIP to begin considering it as a solution for your business?

Let’s peel back the cover a bit on the dirty acronym. While most people think VoIP stands for Voice over the Internet, the last word, Protocol, is typically left off – this a critical difference. Protocol talks about the format in which voice is transmitted, not the medium. An analogy would be a vehicle driving along a road. Think of the road as the medium and the vehicle as the protocol. Now what if you were driving your vehicle on the 401 in Toronto during rush hour and 25cm of snow had just fallen? Pretty slow going – right? Well, now what if it was a clear day, two in the morning, and you were on the 407 ETR? Same vehicle (protocol) on a different road (medium) can yield a significantly different result!

In the voice world this makes all the difference. The vast majority of service providers expect their customers to use the internet as a medium to transmit their voice. They don’t care or consider that the internet may be experiencing high traffic volumes, is slow, or is not available at all. We’ve all had experiences where it seems like forever to have a file download or a web page refresh, in this scenario, the implications for voice traffic is palpable – voice simply cannot and does not work reliably over the Internet. So why would you let a VoIP provider transmit a mission critical business service over an unreliable and inadequate medium?

That’s the BluArc difference. Unlike other providers, at BluArc, we’ve designed a network that is purpose built to deliver voice services. In fact, BluArc doesn’t use the internet to transmit voice, but rather uses its own private network, allowing us to control the traffic…I like to think that every day is a sunny day on the BluArc voice fast lane!

If you’ve thought of giving VoIP a try, or have tried it and had a discouraging result, I invite you to contact a BluArc representative at sales@bluarc.ca. We understand voice, we understand how important voice services are to your business. We are the premiere hosted VoIP provider in Ottawa and Toronto. We’d like to make your move to VoIP a great experience!

Rick Koenders

VP Marketing and Business Development, BluArc Communications

Future Proofing with bluArc

Many years ago at a Press technology Trade Show I was asked about what the future prospects were for VoIP as a technology to replace the TDM technology of the time. My response was that ‘it was a slam dunk.’ By this, I meant that there was no doubt that the Internet Protocol would eventually overtake and then replace TDM as the primary protocol connecting phones to our office phone systems, the PBX, within the customers’ premise. There is much evidence that this technology replacement has indeed occurred. In fact, the vast majority of vendors of traditional office phone technology now use Internet Protocol as the primary protocol for connecting phones to their PBX’s. So while my brief stint as a technology prognosticator was successful, what I didn’t anticipate was the explosive growth of technologies like bluArc’s – a hosted service that connects phones through Internet Protocol both internal and external to the customers’ premise. But that’s the problem with trying to predict the future – you typically get just part of it right.

In speaking with customers and prospective customers I find that this fear of getting it wrong, making a bad technology choice, can lead to decision making paralysis. Nobody wants to make a significant capital investment only to find that technology has gone in a different direction. However, I believe that when making a decision for a new voice technology services there are ways to mitigate against making a wrong technology choice. The first is to understand your business requirements and the second is to choose a vendor that can grow with you as both your requirements and technology changes.

When speaking with my sales team about interacting with prospective customers I tell them that the most important thing to do is to understand what the customer’s needs are. What does the customer like about their current service, what do they dislike, if they had a magic wand, what would they want in a new voice service? What services are they using now, how much, how often? For many prospective customers these aren’t easy questions to answer, but by providing a framework for getting the right information it’s easier to accurately understand what the business requirements are.

The second part of minimizing risk is to choose the right vendor to work with…one that can address your business requirements now, but also have the flexibility to work with you in the future….back to my axiom about the future – you typically get just part of it right! That’s where bluArc comes in – I like to tell prospective customers that bluArc’s hosted service is all about future proofing. bluArc makes the investment in ensuring our services ride the technology curve so that you don’t have to. As technology changes bluArc changes with it, transparent to our customers, all included in a single monthly fee. Flexible, powerful, easy to use.

These days I spend very little time predicting what’s going to happen in the future. By understanding what bluArc customers need to run their business now, and by investing in an infrastructure designed to change as customer requirements and technological capability intersect, I leave the guess work to others. If you’re thinking about changing your voice technology, please consider inviting bluArc in to help you assess your voice service needs. If you’re worried about protecting your investment into the future let us show you how we already do it daily for thousands of bluArc users.

Rick Koenders

VP Sales, bluArc Communications

bluArc Announces Launch of Innovative New Brand and Website

Ottawa, April 2, 2011 – Today, bluArc announced the launch of its new brand and website. bluArc’s new site offers a fresh new look that technically provides its online visitors with significant improvements in navigation.

“Our new brand is more in line with the company’s objectives. It underscores our commitment to our customers and potential customers, and demonstrates how we can help them make intelligent and informed business decisions,” said Jay Swayze, President and CEO. “We wanted our new branding to serve as a springboard for future marketing materials and to provide our company with a compelling visual image—one that is truly memorable.”

The comprehensive brand initiative was created by EyeVero Marketing Communications Group. Scott Williams, President and CEO, said, “We created a new brand to better reflect bluArc’s in-depth expertise in telecommunications and VoIp, and to convey that expertise to their clients. We built their new brand identity to highlight bluArc’s core strengths.”

Please visit bluArc’s new branding initiative at www.bluarc.ca.

About bluArc
Founded in 2005, bluArc provides Hosted Business Phone and Internet Services. It specializes in telecommunications and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) solutions for small- and medium-sized businesses across Canada.

bluArc operates a private IP network throughout Ontario, Quebec, and western Canada that enables its clients to seamlessly connect offices site to site, integrating multiple sites and connecting remote locations. bluArc’s solution connects everyone, everywhere—transforming communications between co-workers and clients.

bluArc’s technology enables it to deliver voice and data services with the quality, security and reliability of a traditional network, but with the simplicity, the richness of feature, and the cost effectiveness that businesses demand. bluArc’s Hosted Business Phone and Internet Services provide unlimited scalability with minimal or no capital expenditure.

Services provided by bluArc include Hosted Business Phone, Multi-Location, Internet, Remote Office, Business Continuity and Conference Calling. bluArc bundles voice and data services on a hosted platform, which enables it to quickly and easily offer new and innovative products without additional capital costs.

Through its IT partners and reseller channels, technical expertise, and in-depth knowledge of small- and medium-sized businesses, bluArc offers its clients telecommunications and VoIP solutions that help decrease costs and increase productivity.

EyeVero Marketing Communications Group
EyeVero Marketing Communications Group uses its unrivaled expertise in business processes and marketing communications to offer its clients a targeted approach to strategic branding, graphic and website design, communications plans and new media communications.

In our approach we are innovative. Behavioral science lies at the heart of everything we do for our clients. As a result, we understand how people cognitively retain information, emotionally connect to it, and become advocates of it––our knowledge helps make your brand a leader in the marketplace.

Our team members have held senior-level marketing and communications positions in businesses ranging from leading edge IT firms to Fortune 100 companies. We have the experience and knowledge to create exceptional marketing initiatives. Whether creating a full-fledged marketing campaign for a multi-national corporation or designing outstanding collateral for the newest of companies, we have the creativity and the knowledge to advance your business.

www.eyevero.com

Emergency Preparedness – a Reprise

It was over a year ago now that BluArc made an emergency preparedness document available to its customers (BluArc Emergency Preparedness Document). The document was brought about by the growing concern of the H1N1 virus and the potential impact that a large scale epidemic would have on businesses in Canada. As concerns of a crisis abated so did businesses interest in emergency preparedness. As I look back on the past few months, however, I can count a few instances that reminded me that we need to always be prepared and we need to be vigilant in our planning.