bluArc - Connect Everyone • Everywhere

The Myths & Realities of the Voice Over IP Network

2011-07-18T12:08:00.003-07:00

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

2011-07-08T13:06:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-15T13:04:00.000-07:00

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?

2011-06-08T13:03:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-10T13:02:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-02T12:58:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-09T01:04:00.000-07:00

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.For example, weather related power outages crippled downtown Toronto on July 6th and July 9th. On June 23, an earthquake interrupted business operations in Ottawa and the surrounding region. More recently, on August 4th, a storm caused widespread power outages in Ottawa and Gatineau that extended into the following day.

Particularly, the event of August 4th reminded me of the perils of not being prepared for an emergency. On that date, a BluArc customer’s facilities had been affected by the power outage. On the morning of August 5th, the building had recovered from a complete outage but was experiencing low, intermittent voltage, rendering their computers, internet access and phone service inoperable. The customer’s of this business had time sensitive transactions that were being impacted by the businesses lack of ability to process the transactions. As you can imagine, this was a serious threat to the business and its customers. Eventually, during the course of the day, the business managed to start processing transactions, but not after significant delays and consternation on all sides.

In the case of this customer, the fact that they had BluArc hosted voice services mitigated the problems caused by the outage. By being able to direct phone calls and fax services in real time it allowed them to temporarily move those critical services to a location that was unaffected by the outage. Not having an emergency plan, however, delayed the move of those services by hours. The impact of this was a potential loss of customers, loss of revenue, loss of productivity and expenses related to requiring emergency assistance. I bet that this customer puts an emergency plan in place in the next few weeks! What is the state of your emergency planning? How would your businesses, your customers, be impacted by a prolonged outage? Do you know?

Since BluArc began operations five years ago we have provided emergency service assistance to customers many times. In the worst case, a fire displaced the customer from their building for over 9 months. The beauty of BluArc services is that even if your facility is completely lost in an event such as a fire, BluArc services continue to operate. In fact, in all of the emergency situations mentioned above, BluArc services continued to operate in an uninterrupted fashion. Unlike traditional phone systems, PBX’s and key systems, BluArc services are hosted in Bell facilities that are designed to be resistant to short and long term power outages, providing uninterrupted service to our customers.

If you’d like to know more about how BluArc can be a part of your emergency preparedness please call us at 416-309-2350 or 613-254-6590, or email us at sales@bluarc.ca.

Rick Koenders

Vice President Sales,
BluArc Communications

Introduction to VoIP Seminar

2010-06-16T00:12:00.000-07:00

Are you in the Ottawa area and looking for an introduction to Voice Over IP? Join BluArc Thursday, June 24th from 8:00 AM to 9:30 AM. Seminar agenda is as follows:

8:00 to 8:15 Attendees Arrive
8:15 to 8:20 Introductions
8:20 to 8:30 BluArc Overview
8:30 to 8:55 Understanding your VoIP Options
8:55 to 9:05 Why People are Changing
9:05 to 9:15 Testimonial
9:15 to 9:30 Question and Answer

Please contact BluArc at 613-254-6590 and select option 1 for more details or to register. Seating is limited.

5 Useful Apps for the iPhone

2010-06-15T09:07:00.000-07:00

At BluArc we are slowly migrating from the Blackberry platform to the iPhone platform for mobile devices. Aside from the elegant look and feel and intuitive interface, there are actually some very interesting apps for business out there and hopefully, in the near future, some interesting BluArc apps for your organization! article

Fields of Fire

2010-05-10T08:00:00.000-07:00

Our CTO often reminds us that we each have a field of fire that we must stay within in order to be successful. I’m not certain that the analogy is completely accurate but it conveys a principle that we adhere to at BluArc. As individuals we can’t do everything well, no one expects us to, so you don’t go to a psychiatrist to fix your broken arm, you go to a doctor with the expertise to fix it correctly. More specifically in the voice world, with the advent of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) there was a proliferation of companies deploying VoIP that actually had no experience or skills in deploying voice solutions. The feeling was that if it used internet protocol then it must be like data...therefore, a company that can build a data network can build a voice network. Right!

For the first many years of VoIP deployments, that’s where I think things went wrong. Companies that had no experience in deploying and supporting voice solutions were told by vendors of voice solutions that it was as simple as deploying data networks. As the Canadian General Manager of a US based VoIP Company, I was told to focus the company’s sales efforts on recruiting security system installers as resellers of our platform. Security companies - the same companies that deploy your alarm system!

Deployment and ongoing support of voice services are not as simple as deploying data services. The reason being is that users of voice services expect 100% quality, 100% reliability, and 100% availability of the service. The elements to deploy a service that meets these customer metrics are vast and varied and require special design skills including an extensive knowledge of data networking, voice networking, carrier integration, along with many other specialized skills that are not traditional skills in the data domain. That’s why at BluArc we focus our efforts on voice services and let our customers’ IT providers focus on the data services.

As a customer, if you’re making a decision to move to VoIP, ask your prospective vendors what expertise they have in voice services, what referrals can they provide you with, and what technical and support resources they will have should you experience problems with your service quality or reliability. If your prospective provider of VoIP services comes from a traditional IT background, do a little extra due diligence about them.

Thank goodness VoIP has come a long way since its early deployments. The dream of VoIP providers that ‘anybody’ could deploy a VoIP solution hasn’t transpired, and that’s a good thing. Traditional IT providers are much wiser as well. In the past BluArc often ran into data providers trying to sell voice solutions, but much less so now. In fact, BluArc now often partners with those same IT providers in the delivery of an integrated voice and data network, and our customers are better for it! If you’re thinking of VoIP, we’d love for you to be a customer – our field of fire is providing the best voice solutions for the Small and Medium Business market - you can contact us at sales@bluarc.ca.

Rick Koenders

Vice President, Sales
BluArc Communications

Want to Improve Your Online Presence?

2010-05-10T07:58:00.000-07:00

We hired Greg Nisbet to help us implement some ideas we had on using the web and new media to interact better online with our customers and potential customers. Unlike a traditional web site, we wanted a setup that would accomplish our goals across various media platforms (ie. Twitter, LinkedIn, RSS, newsletters) and yet be very easy to administer for pretty much anyone on our staff.

We were very pleased with the results. If you like what you see and want to do something similar for your business, Greg has offered all existing BluArc clients some great package deals for improving your web presence.

For more information, contact Greg using this form:

[contact-form 2 "Improve My Online Presence"]

Future Proofing with BluArc

2010-04-29T03:28:00.000-07:00

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 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 your requirements and as 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 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, and 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

VoIP, the Dirty Acronym?

2010-04-23T02:33:00.000-07:00

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 5 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 difference is critical. The vast majority of service providers expect their customers to use the internet as a medium to transmit their voice. So what if the internet is 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, and the implications for voice traffic are 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 Sales, BluArc Communications

Understanding BluArc Managed VoIP

2010-04-05T10:10:00.000-07:00

Before a small or medium business owner can evaluate any communication option it is critical to understand a four letter acronym that has become the bane of the telecommunications industry. The term Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) is often used to herald the coming of a new technological revolution. In fact some telecommunications companies have chosen to use the term VOIP as the cornerstone of their marketing campaigns. Like almost all such jargon, it is typically misused and misinterpreted and ends up being of little value to small and medium business owners looking to make a telecommunications decision. The source of the confusion is that the term VOIP is often used interchangeably with voice over the internet, but the difference is critical.

Historically, and most often to this day, businesses ran two networks, one for voice, one for data, and never the twain shall meet. Many years ago, companies that specialized in developing infrastructure for data communications came up with the idea that it would make sense if all electronic transmissions within a business were transmitted over a single infrastructure…including voice. The belief was that by deploying one set of wiring, one set of switching, and one set of staff to run the voice and data needs of a company, costs savings would be achieved. Well, one of the first steps to achieve this goal was to find a way to convert voice to a format that could travel on a data network. Conversion of sound to a different form happens all the time. For example, sound is converted to grooves in a record and reconverted to sound as a needle passes over the grooves. Sound is also converted to digital pulses as it travels over a telephone wire. In order to travel over a data network voice needs to be converted into smaller packets or what is often referred to as IP (internet protocol) packets. And, once voice is converted into packets and sent along a data network it is called Voice Over Internet Protocol or VOIP.

While the concept of VOIP is relatively simple, the implementation is not. To understand why it is so challenging, it is worth delving deeper into why it was initially important to convert data into IP packets. The concept of breaking information into discrete pieces, or packets, is the result of a military requirement dating back to the 1970’s. The requirement was to be able to reliably transmit information from one location to another in the case of a catastrophic event that destroyed portions of the communication infrastructure. Data would be broken into packets, sent in different directions, arrive at the same destination and be reassembled in the correct order. If one packet didn’t make it because a route to the destination was compromised or the packet became damaged, a message would be sent back to the source asking it to resend the missing packet of data. Eventually, all the data would arrive. Interestingly enough, this same methodology, although much advanced, is still used today on most data networks. More importantly, the whole internet is based on the concept that data (including voice) is broken into discrete packets at the source, sent to a destination potentially using different routes, and then arrive at a destination where they are reassembled.

This is fine for packets other than voice. When you send an email to someone, if it arrives at its destination 1 second or 10 seconds after you transmit it, there will be no impact on its readability at the other end. But what does this mean for voice? Let’s say that we’ve begun speaking to a coworker, your voice is converted into packets and then they are sent along their way to their destination. Most of the packets arrive at the destination in a timely fashion, but a few don’t. What are the choices? Wait until the missing packets are re-sent and then try to reassemble them? Ignore the missing packets and transmit the message? You can imagine that either methodology would result in an unsatisfactory result causing delay, jitter, missing words or word segments, among others, and this is exactly what happens when voice is sent over the internet. The result is palpable. Those of you that have tried freeware applications or broadband voice services that transmit voice over the internet know that while the voice quality is fine sometimes, at other times it can be extremely poor, fails to work, or the result is unintelligible. This type of communications may be fine when conversing with a friend around the globe, but you wouldn’t want to use it to run your business!

So this is where the confusion with the term VOIP lies. Voice Over Internet Protocol speaks to the methodology of converting voice into packets that can be transmitted over a broadband network, whereas voice over the internet speaks of one medium – the internet – over which VOIP may be sent. Unfortunately, the internet is a medium that was not originally designed to transmit voice. So if someone tells you they have a VOIP solution, the real question is, does it travel over the internet or any other unmanaged broadband network that was not specifically designed to handle voice? As a small business owner it is important to understand the difference and to challenge any potential vendor with their understanding of it.

But does this mean that VOIP is a technology that should not be implemented by small or medium businesses? Most definitely not! Most new communications solutions are VOIP based, in fact, most major carriers transmit voice over their core networks using some form of VOIP technology. What is critical to determine is whether or not your provider is supplying you with a solution that is managed, or what we refer to as Managed Voice Over Internet Protocol (MVOIP).

The concept of MVOIP was develop by BluArc communications to help small business owners differentiate between VOIP solutions that are deployed over networks not designed for voice versus VOIP solutions that are. In this sense there are two critical components of a managed network to consider. The first is your local network or LAN (local area network), the second is the wide area network (WAN) – or the component of your network external to your facilities. Both segments of your network need to be managed in order for voice calls to be transmitted consistently, reliably, and with a high level of quality. To learn more about this and how BluArc can ensure voice quality and reliability for small and medium businesses using MVOIP, go to http://www.bluarc.ca.

General FAQ

2010-04-05T08:44:00.000-07:00

List of general questions that are asked by our customers.

Questions/Comments

2010-04-05T02:45:00.000-07:00

Do you have questions or comments about how to use the BluArc system that our FAQ doesn't answer? This is the place to ask your questions and have one of our expert technical support people provide you with their answers.

6 Money Saving Tips for Small Business Owners

2010-03-30T07:30:00.000-07:00

There are lots of ways to save money for your business, and we've heard quite a few of them from our customers. Here's a list of six money-saving tips for business that you might not have thought of. Click here to view the article.

Money Saving IT Tips for Small Business

2010-03-30T07:25:00.000-07:00

Came across an interesting article on money-saving tips for small businesses, relating specifically to IT. They look at networking, telephony, and storage solutions. You can read the article here.