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Competitive Analysis Report

Cisco Unified Communications

Management Suite (Operations

Manager and Service Monitor) vs. IR

PROGNOSIS®

Printed in the United States of America.

Copyright 2007 Edison Group, Inc. New York. Edison Group offers no warranty either expressed or

implied on the information contained herein and shall be held harmless for errors resulting from its use.

All products are trademarks of their respective owners.

First Publication: 2006

Produced by: Barry Cohen, Editor-in-Chief

Table of Contents

Introduction and Purpose of Analysis ....................................................................................... 1

Methodology ........................................................................................................................... 1

Yankee Group Report ............................................................................................................ 2

Operational Overview .................................................................................................................. 4

Architecture and Offered Solutions ..................................................................................... 4

Business Overview ........................................................................................................................ 7

Pricing ...................................................................................................................................... 7

Financial Overview ................................................................................................................ 8

Market Penetration ..................................................................................................................... 13

IR Prognosis Industry News and Opinion .............................................................................. 15

Press Releases, Industry Happenings, and Opinions ...................................................... 15

Demographics, Interviews, and Satisfaction Factors ............................................................. 17

Demographics ....................................................................................................................... 17

What Customers Are Saying About IR Prognosis ........................................................... 18

What Integrated Research Has Been Saying About Cisco .............................................. 19

Satisfaction Factors ............................................................................................................... 20

IR Prognosis IP Telephony Network Management Suite ..................................................... 21

Functional Product Overview ............................................................................................ 21

Cisco Unified Communications Management Suite .............................................................. 30

Functional Product Overview (General) ........................................................................... 30

Strengths of Cisco, Weaknesses of Prognosis® ................................................................ 32

Where Will IR Focus Its IP Telephony Management Resources? .................................. 34

Implications for Cisco and Next Steps ..................................................................................... 36

Conclusions .................................................................................................................................. 38

Edison: Cisco UCM Suite vs. IR PROGNOSIS Page 1

Introduction and Purpose of Analysis

Integrated Research (IR), Limited has disrupted a number of competitive Cisco

engagements using a sponsored report prepared by The Yankee Group as well as

ongoing Cisco sales and marketing channel involvement and feedback. These sources

claim that IR’s lifecycle PROGNOSIS® network management suite of applications are

being touted as superior to and leading Cisco’s own tools, and should be seen as a “must

consider” by all large (>2,500 endpoints) Cisco IP Telephony installations, either new or

established.

The primary purpose of this Edison Group report is to provide a “field oriented”

reference guide for Cisco sales channels and marketing teams to counter IR and

consultant report claims with documented competitive intelligence, so that claims made

during competitive engagement processes can easily be addressed and rebutted.

Sentences in bold convey findings that deserve special emphasis for Cisco Sales channel

personnel.

This report will also be used to provide product marketing and development teams with

the key functionality of the IR PROGNOSIS suite and key differentiators of that suite

when compared to Cisco’s current or future Unified Communications Management

Suite network management portfolio for its Cisco Unified Communications IP

Telephony (IPT) solutions. These include management solutions based around Cisco’s

Unified Call Manager 5.0/4.2, Unified Call Manager Express, Unity Connection, Unity

Express, Unified Contact Center Enterprise, Unified Contact Center Express, Cisco

Conference Connection, Personal Assistant, Emergency Responder, Unified Meeting

Place Express, IP Phones, and all infrastructure products including gateways, routers,

switching elements, which IR claims to manage better than Cisco.

Methodology

Primary and secondary research was performed in all publicly known sources. Targeted

for interviews and information exchanges were Internal Cisco Account and Regional

Managers, TMEs, SEs, and Cisco Business Unit personnel, Cisco customers, IR winback

customers, and some IR customers. Strengths and weaknesses were determined and an

effort was made to discern future product direction and market planning by IR, with

implications and recommended next steps for Cisco marketing and development

planning teams.


Yankee Group Report

A January 2006 Yankee Group report titled “VoIP Management Solutions Guide:

Managing Cisco IP Communications in the Enterprise” was released. The report was

funded by Integrated Research. It states:

“Many IT and telecom managers who are deploying Cisco IP Communications will

continue to lack confidence until they adopt a more complete management solution

from a credible, experienced vendor.”

“The principal strengths of PROGNOSIS are in the breadth and depth of coverage

across the Cisco IPT solution, the ability to provide TDM-equivalent performance

management by monitoring calls and call performance in real time and the flexibility

and scalability of its solution."

"As more organizations adopt larger scale deployments, the ability for PROGNOSIS

to manage highly distributed or very large environments (often exceeding 10,000

phones) will position the company as leading vendor for a variety of deployment

sizes."

Perhaps the most disturbing statement, however, was the following:

“…the top-ranked product in their VoIP Management Solutions Guide.” "The

shortlist for any enterprise should include PROGNOSIS."

This report was developed toward the end of 2005, without much effort made in

understanding that CiscoWorks and Cisco ITEM functionality had been successfully

deployed in hundreds of larger Cisco IP Telephony installations (>2,000 IP endpoints)

even prior to IR’s entry into IP Telephony monitoring in June 2004. The report was

developed before Cisco really started to promote the benefits and vision of its newest

Unified Communications Management Suite. Based on intensive customer feedback,

Cisco Operations Manager and Service Monitor were specifically custom-designed for

all Cisco IP Telephony installations, not just the much larger deployments (>10,000

endpoints, comprising 5 percent of all installations) where IR PROGNOSIS received

most of its kudos in the Yankee report. For as long as IR has been in existence, Cisco has

been very successful in network monitoring for pure data networks. Yankee Group did

give a lot of credibility to Cisco in the <10,000 station markets (which IR does not

penetrate).

Another glaring omission in the Yankee Group report is Cisco’s managed services

company NetSolve. NetSolve is a service provider for large IP Telephony customers who

demand precision WAN monitoring, assessment, and trouble resolution. It can remotely

resolve over 90 percent of network troubles while most of the remaining 10 percent are

http://prognosis.com/white_papers/ip_telephony/resource_center/page__1899.aspx


completely diagnosed prior to technician deployment, all from a central Network

Operations Center (NOC). Cisco should stress NetSolve and its track record in large-

scale Cisco IP Telephony deployments.


Operational Overview

Founded in 1988 and headquartered in Sydney, Australia, Integrated Research (IR) is a

member of the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) symbol IRI. Its initial purpose was to

develop a comprehensive line of systems and application management products for the

business computing industry. IR, in their own words, is now developing “precise

performance monitoring solutions for business-critical computing and recently for Cisco

IP telephony environments.” Annual revenues are in the $30M USD range with

approximately 120 people operating in North, Central, and South Americas ($9.5M vs.

$8.7M in the second half of 2004)), Europe from the UK ($3M vs. $2.8M), and Asia Pacific

from Australia ($2.3M vs. $3.5M). IR markets in some 60 countries through a large

network of distributors.

From June 2005 through December 2005, IR reported a 38 percent decline in profit on

$14.8M revenue, 2 percent lower than in the second half of 2004. This occurred mainly

because of (1) major expense outlays in R&D to get PROGNOSIS release version 8 to the

market, and (2) major sales realignment expenses to directly engage customer bases and

prospects, especially in the U.S. IR did not secure one significant new VoIP order during

this entire six month period. During that time, all of its revenue came from licensing

fees, licensing, and maintenance contracts, with a very small amount from post-sales

consultancy fees. The load was carried primarily by their IT infrastructure business-

critical performance management software for computing environments (PROGNOSIS

for Windows/UNIX/Linux and PROGNOSIS for HP OpenView) rather than from Cisco

IP Telephony environments, even though they have some 15 existing customer plus new

customer licensing contacts for IP Telephony.

IR is considered by some as a leader in the field of network management innovation.

Edison Group research shows little direct publicity on this company and its product

portfolios in terms of analyst reviews (Dataquest, Current Analysis, Network World,

Tech Republic, VoIP News, VoIP Line, VoIP Developer, Tolly reports,

KnowledgeStorm), trade show and/or magazine coverage, and even the industry-

sponsored white papers so prevalent among its 30 or so competitors. There was nothing

in leader quadrants (magic or otherwise), and nothing per se on notable innovations,

and no externally published white paper developed by IR itself.

Architecture and Offered Solutions

All PROGNOSIS solutions are built around the same general architecture with the goal

of working seamlessly together. Version 8 was released during the fourth quarter of


2004. It is somewhat similar to Cisco’s IOS, but IOS travels much farther and controls

many more infrastructure operations than the PROGNOSIS ever will.

IR develops, sells, licenses, and maintains PROGNOSIS software suites for four major

solution areas, as described in the following subsections.

Automated Teller Machine (ATM) and Point of Sale (POS) Networks

Solutions to proactively monitor, measure, and troubleshoot critical components to

achieve optimal performance and availability in BASE24 environments. PROGNOSIS for

BASE24 offers business and operational-level management via a comprehensive suite of

integrated products that include:

PROGNOSIS Transaction Surveillance. Uncovers suspect or failed ATM and POS

transaction details from volumes of data trapped in log files.

PROGNOSIS XPNET Manager. Monitors performance and availability of XPNET, to

identify and correct problems before they impact operations.

PROGNOSIS ATM Transaction Manager. Monitors real-time ATMs resource

utilization, denied transactions, and excess stand-in transactions.

PROGNOSIS ATM Incident Manager. Ensures that Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

are met with alerts directed to the most appropriate resource when a fault occurs.

PROGNOSIS POS Transaction Manager. Identifies trends in denied POS transactions

in real time, and proactively manages POS resources.

IP Telephony and VoIP Systems and Applications 1

A comprehensive suite of IPT lifecycle management software products covering Voice

over IP (VoIP) network readiness assessment, pre-deployment assurance testing, and

ongoing performance management for Cisco IP Unified Communications environments.

Functions include:

PROGNOSIS IP Telephony Manager

PROGNOSIS IP Telephony Express

PROGNOSIS for SRST

PROGNOSIS IP Telephony Assessor

PROGNOSIS IPCC Management Reporting

1 Covered in a later section.

http://www.prognosis.com/Products_and_Solutions/ATM_/_POS_monitoring/page__1350.aspx

http://www.prognosis.com/products/atm_/_pos_monitoring/products__and__solutions/page__1381.aspx





http://www.prognosis.com/Products_and_Solutions/IP_telephony_monitoring/page__1351.aspx

http://www.prognosis.com/products/ip_telephony_monitoring/products__and__solutions/page__1400.aspx






IT infrastructure Spanning HP NonStop, Windows, UNIX, Linux, and Cisco IP

Telephony

IR offers a PROGNOSIS Smart Plug-In (SPI) that supplements the functionality of HP

OpenView Operations (OVO) by providing secure, centralized, on-demand access to

alerts and problems when monitoring HP NonStop nodes. PROGNOSIS SPI for HP

OVO has been integrated with Operations for UNIX® and Operations for Windows®.

PROGNOSIS IP Telephony Smart Link Integration for HP OpenView. Enables

Network Node Manager (NNM) to monitor Cisco IP telephony environments. This

is essentially an HP-tailored, less functional version of PROGNOSIS IT Telephony

Assessor and Manager.

Web Application Service Level and Availability Monitoring

PROGNOSIS for Web Applications monitors, measures, and manages web applications

using two integrated products that view customer application experience, emulate user

activity, and measure browser response through customized web sessions.

PROGNOSIS Web Session Recorder. Monitors web application availability along

with determining user experience factors.

PROGNOSIS Web Session Emulator. Helps to eliminate service level breaches by

emulating, monitoring, and measuring every stage of complex user web sessions.

http://www.prognosis.com/Products_and_Solutions/IT_infrastructure_monitoring/page__1352.aspx


http://www.prognosis.com/Products_and_Solutions/Web_applications_monitoring/page__1353.aspx

http://www.prognosis.com/Products_and_Solutions/Web_applications_monitoring/Products/page__1809.aspx

http://www.prognosis.com/products/web_application_monitoring/products__and__solutions/page__1810.aspx

http://www.prognosis.com/products/web_application_monitoring/products__and__solutions/page__1808.aspx


Business Overview

PROGNOSIS solutions manage servers, networks, desktops, and applications ranging

from Microsoft Exchange and complex eBusiness applications to financial transaction

processing systems. They also offer PROGNOSIS for Cisco IP Telephony. IR provides

training (only 1-3 training classes per month) and consulting services at only three

locations — Denver, London, and Sydney — and at some customer sites. It is interesting

to note that, during a six-month period, IR only offers fourteen 4-day training sessions,

only four of which are devoted to the design and usage of PROGNOSIS for Cisco IPT.

All of the rest are sessions devoted to planning, deployment, and configuring

PROGNOSIS for IT Infrastructures (HP Non-Stop, Windows, UNIX, and Linux). As

stated earlier, a greater percentage of sales comes from its PROGNOSIS for IT

Infrastructures lines, especially their Windows/UNIX/Linux sales then moderate sales in

HP OpenView, and less (but rapidly increasing) sales in their IP Telephony lines. IR is

counting on the IP Telephony market to yield much greater future revenue. IR is

increasing its focus on VoIP for large systems integrators, service providers, and major

larger enterprises, as well as for smaller Cisco customers and, eventually, Avaya and

Nortel customers.

IR has experienced a downturn in its Asia Pacific business along with a change in their

AP management team. The company will increase focus on VoIP revenues in its Asia

Pacific region, review sales models for key countries, and also increase focus on its home

Australian market.

IR has also established strategic alliances with SCO, Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard,

IDX Systems Corporation, T-Systems (Germany), Microsoft, and IBM. Conversations

with IR reveal that IR considers its offering a more in-depth tool than what HP has

developed in their HP/Cisco Smart Plug-In for HP OpenView (HPOV) Network Node

Manager (NNM) and against Cisco ITEM itself. No comments were received in response

to questions about Operations Manager and Service Monitor.

Pricing

IR is also going after the small and medium-sized businesses, and just recently has been

very quick to pursue very small customers, as well. A SMB example: for a 50-user basic

IP network that would run Call Manager Express and Cisco Unity, IR sells as a bundle a

10-year right-to-use license for its PROGNOSIS IP Telephony Manager for an

approximate $1,100 one-time charge. Representative installation charge is around $2,000

per day and would require two days ($4,000). An additional 23 percent of the price,

$253, is charged per year for 24x7 maintenance, patches, upgrades, and all support. So,


the TOC over a 10-year period for this representative small installation would amount to

approximately $7,630.

For larger customers using Cisco Call Manager and Unity Messaging, IR typically

licenses its software (delivered on CD) at $17.60 per user. This per-user license also

includes 24x7 support, maintenance, patches, and upgrades. Installation charges are

$2,000 per day. Therefore, a 500-user install would price out at around $8,800 per year

plus, say, a week ($10,000) for the installation. For a 1,000-user install, the price would be

around $17,600 per year plus, say, two weeks ($20,000) for the install. For larger

customers, using this structure, the price would be $17.60 per user + $2,000 per day

installation.

Financial Overview

Revenue

Revenue from Ordinary Activities

in '000's AUD

Six

months

ending

12/30/05

Year

ending

6/30/05

Year

ending

6/30/04

Year

ending

6/30/03

Year

ending

6/30/02

Revenue from license fees $7,008 $17,726 $15,842 $12,396 $18,776

% of total revenues 47.31% 53.64% 52.68% 44.93% 58.12%

year-over-year change na 11.89% 27.80% -33.98% na

Revenue from maintenance fees $7,535 $14,877 $13,712 $14,456 $12,689


year-over-year change na 8.50% -5.15% 13.93% na

Revenue from consulting and other

services

$271 $446 $518 $658 $772


year-over-year change na -13.90% -21.28% -14.77% na

License, Maintenance, Consulting, &

Services

$14,814 $33,049 $30,072 $27,510 $32,237

% of Total Revenues from Ordinary

Activities

100.00% 100.00% 100.00% 99.72% 99.78%

Government grants 0 0 0 78 70

Total revenue from ordinary activities $14,814 $33,049 $30,072 $27,588 $32,307



Revenue Growth

Revenues are derived mainly from license and maintenance fees and have grown in a

fairly consistent fashion with the exception of year 2003. The lackluster performance of

2003 is attributed to a decrease in IT capital spending.

During fiscal year 2005, new sales in VoIP grew by 153 percent from the previous year.

Fiscal year 2004 saw similar growth, with an increase of 113 percent in VoIP telephony

products for managing the Cisco Call Manager. It should be noted that the six months

ending December 30, 2005 are not on track with prior periods.

Factors for Revenue Growth

Customer Growth

For the six months ending December 30, 2005, the company gained 15 existing plus new

license contracts.

In the year ending June 30, 2005, the company gained 58 new customers, including 31 in

the VoIP business. New customers include JP Morgan, Abercrombie and Fitch, Airbus

Boeing, and British Airways. During fiscal year 2003, the company gained 63 new

customers.

European Markets

Revenues are derived mainly from the Americas (including North, South, and Central

America), Europe, and Asia Pacific (including Australia and Asia). The company aims to

increase penetration in European markets with a new office in Frankfurt, Germany,

coupled with a newly announced partnership with T-System, a division of Deutsche

Telekom.


in '000's AUD

Six

months

ending

12/30/05

Year

ending

6/30/05

Year

ending

6/30/04

Year

ending

6/30/03

Year

ending

6/30/02

Americas $9,475 $19,018 $17,762 $17,362 $25,265



Europe 3,024 6,946 5,559 3,344 4,620





in '000's AUD

Six

months

ending

12/30/05

Year

ending

6/30/05

Year

ending

6/30/04

Year

ending

6/30/03

Year

ending

6/30/02

Asia Pacific 2,315 5,482 5,622 5,469 4,230


year-over-year change na -2.49% 2.80% 29.29% na

Unallocated 0 1,602 1,129 1,335 -1,878

Total $14,814 $33,048 $30,072 $27,510 $32,237

Expenses

Expenses from Ordinary Activities

in '000's AUD

Six

months

ending

12/30/05

Year

ending

6/30/05

Year

ending

6/30/04

Year

ending

6/30/03

Year

ending

6/30/02

Research and development $3,803 $5,881 $5,876 $6,211 $4,448

% of total revenues from ordinary

activities

25.67% 17.79% 19.54% 22.51% 13.77%


Sales and marketing $7,270 $15,704 $13,790 $16,106 $15,248


activities

49.08% 47.52% 45.86% 58.38% 47.20%


General and administration [1] $1,945 $3,494 $3,493 $4,567 $4,576


activities

13.13% 10.57% 11.62% 16.55% 14.16%

year-over-year change na 0.03% -23.52% -0.20% na

Total expenses from ordinary

activities

$13,018 $25,079 $23,159 $26,884 $24,272


Activities

87.88% 75.88% 77.01% 97.45% 75.13%


Profit from ordinary activities $1,796 $7,970 $6,913 $704 $8,035


Activities

12.12% 24.12% 22.99% 2.55% 24.87%



Expenses from Ordinary Activities

in '000's AUD

Six

months

ending

12/30/05

Year

ending

6/30/05

Year

ending

6/30/04

Year

ending

6/30/03

Year

ending

6/30/02

Interest received 214 294 260 561 257

Profit before tax $2,010 $8,264 $7,173 $1,265 $8,292


Activities

13.57% 25.01% 23.85% 4.59% 25.67%

Income tax expense -379 -2,065 -2,718 -193 -1,769

Net Profit $1,631 $6,199 $4,455 $1,072 $6,523


Activities

11.01% 18.76% 14.81% 3.89% 20.19%


Note:

[1] Year 2003 general and administrative costs incorporate $23,000 in written-down

value of non-current assets.

Sales and Marketing

Beginning in the second half of 2004, the company added sales and marketing personnel

to boost VoIP business. Seven people were added during the second half of 2005, sixteen

in fiscal year 2005, and four in fiscal year 2004.

Net Profit

Net profit margin for the six months ending December 30, 2005 was 11.01 percent, which

is low compared to previous periods.

Balance Sheet

Balance Sheet $'000's AUD

Six

months

ending

12/30/05

Year

ending

6/30/05

Year

ending

6/30/04

Year

ending

6/30/03

Year

ending

6/30/02

Cash assets 9,262 9,699 8,510 6,909 6,111

Receivables 10,639 10,079 10,433 7,632 12,152

Other 4,199 3,777 4,006 4,462 3,450

Total current assets $24,100 $23,555 $22,949 $19,003 $21,713

Non-current assets


Balance Sheet $'000's AUD

Six

months

ending

12/30/05

Year

ending

6/30/05

Year

ending

6/30/04

Year

ending

6/30/03

Year

ending

6/30/02

Receivables 0 0 196 413 696

Investments 0 0 0 0 0

Property, plant, and equipment 1,273 1,238 988 992 810

Deferred tax assets 370 633 1,618 1,910 604

Intangible assets 8,818 10,169 8,302 7,696 7,480

Total non-current assets 10,461 12,040 11,104 11,011 9,590

Total assets $34,561 $35,595 $34,053 $30,014 $31,303

Current liabilities

Payables 1,278 1,793 2,636 3,473 1,164

Current tax liabilities 201 60 960 0 1,783

Provisions 1,205 1,023 988 996 2,636

Other 10,216 8,121 8,225 7,627 7,653

Total current liabilities $12,900 $10,997 $12,809 $12,096 $13,236

Non-current liabilities

Deferred tax liabilities 2,106 2,843 2,339 2,227 2,230

Provisions 190 181 261 267 223

Total non-current liabilities 2,296 3,024 2,600 2,494 2,453

Total liabilities 15,196 14,021 15,409 14,590 15,689

Net assets $19,365 $21,574 $18,644 $15,424 $15,614

Equity

Contributed equity 530 468 427 423 423

Reserves -194 -395

Retained profits 19029 21,106 18,217 15,001 15,191

Total equity $19,365 $21,179 $18,644 $15,424 $15,614

The company maintains a strong balance sheet with substantial cash levels and no debt.


Market Penetration

Some 30 players comprise the VoIP monitoring and network management landscape.

Products vary widely in form factor, price, functionality, and deployment. Some come

from current vendors of test and monitoring equipment for enterprise LANs, WANs,

networked applications, and Service Provider networks, while others are purely

software-based from start-ups. IR considers NetIQ, Viola NetAlly, Spirent

Communications, and Agilent Technologies as top competition for PROGNOSIS IP

Telephony Assessor. It considers ClarusIPC Assurance, Smarts Service Assurance

Manager, and Brix Networks Service Assurance for VoIP as top competition for its

network assurance area, and considers NetIQ, Concord, Micromuse, HP OpenView for

Cisco, and Cisco ITEM as top competition for its Cisco IP Telephony Manager. Other

competition include Acterna, InfoVista, Qovia, Ixia, Empirix, Fluke, Viola, Apparent

Networks, NetScout, Network General, WildPackets, Network Instruments, NetSolve

(Cisco), Candela, Hammer, and Brix Networks.

IDC places PROGNOSIS under its VoIP Management market. IDC predicts a 31.5

percent CAGR for worldwide VoIP Management with 2004 revenue at $81M, and

forecasts a $319M market in 2009. Infonetics Research predicts that enterprise adoption

of VoIP technology in North America will double by 2010, which will include half of

small businesses (triple what it is now) and two-thirds of large enterprises.

Dell’OroGroup further predicts that this market will approach $4.2B in 2010, from $1.6B.

2004 IDC research ranks Integrated Research as number 58 of 132 vendors, having 0.1

percent ($17M revenue) of the overall worldwide network and systems management

marketshare, with Cisco at number 9 with 2.2 percent ($255M revenue). Updated results

for IR would probably place them a little higher, but nowhere near Cisco strengths here.

They could certainly be in the top 10 IP Telephony network performance management

vendors.

A 2005 survey by Integrated Research states that Cisco IP Telephony equipment

accounts for some 62 percent of all deployments, compared to 43 percent in 2004. This is

a significant increase and is why IR is targeting and developing relationships and

platforms for Cisco specifically. Of 1,200 companies surveyed (34 percent from North

America and 66 percent from Europe and Asia Pacific) only 5 percent stated that their IP

endpoint deployments reached or exceeded 10,000 stations. The study clearly shows that

current IP phone deployment is concentrated heavily in the <500 station range, at 57

percent, 501-1,000 at 14 percent, 1,001-5,000 at 14 percent, and 5001-10,000 at 4 percent.

Therefore, by stating that Cisco market share has increased significantly in the IP

Telephony space, that major deployments concentrate in the <10,000 station area, and

http://prognosis.com/2006_news_items/latest_news/news__and__events/page__1934.aspx


that Cisco’s network management prowess is very strong in the <10,000 station category,

IR research and the Yankee paper both suggest that Cisco should really not be that

concerned over current share statistics when confronted with IR PROGNOSIS

competitive claims, inquiries, or rebuttals. Although IR has a compelling set of network

management tools and a good track record, it is felt that other competitors such as NetIQ

are more significant competition.


IR PROGNOSIS Industry News and Opinion

Press Releases, Industry Happenings, and Opinions

Integrated Research will be available at the June 12 GoldenGate Real-Time 2006 User

Conference in Las Vegas, June 18 at the Las Vegas Cisco Networkers Conference, June 19

at the HP Software Forum in Miami Beach, July 24 at the Australasia HP Non-Stop

computing conferences and tradeshows, August 2 at the VoIP World Australasia,

August 21 at VoiceCon Fall San Francisco, September 10 at the ACI Customer Exchange

(ACE) Americas, September 25 at IPComm 2006 in Nashville, and September 25 at

Networkers 2006 Australia. Four IP Telephony training courses will also be offered

during this same period.

April 2006. IR won a prestigious Australian Consensus Software Award for its

PROGNOSIS for Web Applications, an application that measures the quality of user

experience with a company’s Web-based applications (internet banking, travel booking,

or other online shopping).

Jan. 2006. The Yankee Group released their report “VoIP Management Solutions Guide:

Managing Cisco IP Communications in the Enterprise.”

Nov. 2005. IR announced a partnership with T-Systems division of Deutsche Telekom

for a major VoIP deployment in Germany. IR also announced the opening of a new

office in the center of Frankfurt am. PROGNOSIS has current relationships with Deutche

Bahn and Deutche Bank in their business-critical computing environments. This venture

will require more resources and oversight from IR. Demand for IP Telephony in

Germany is on the rise, but all major players — including Siemens, Alcatel, Avaya, and

many others — are there with their own network management tools.

Oct. 2005. IR announced PROGOSIS ATM Incident Manager, designed to optimize

availability of ATM machines and simplify trouble management.

Oct. 2005. IR was granted DSPP Partnership Certification by HP Integrity non-stop

server systems for their PROGNOSIS precise performance management solution.

Oct. 2005. IR announced a technical and marketing partnership with UK Tiger

Communications plc. Tiger is the market leader in the provision of call management

billing solutions. PROGNOSIS mean opinion score (MOS) algorithm will be integrated

with Tiger Communications’ voice traffic management, integration, and billing solution


to bill based on call quality, rather than just call quantity. This could become quite

controversial.

Sept 2005. IR announced the release of Version 8.0.1 of both PROGNOSIS IP Telephony

Manager and PROGNOSIS IP Telephony Express. Architectural and feature

enhancements were verified by Cisco for the latest versions of their Unified

CallManager and Unified CallManager Express product sets.

May 2005. IR unveiled PROGNOSIS IP Assessor for readiness testing an enterprise data

network prior to a commitment to deploy voice and video traffic for IP Telephony. It did

not go General Availability until July 2005! IP Assessor simulates, records, and analyses

VoIP traffic in real-time, over extended periods of time, and is used to measure pre- and

post-deployment network traffic and report on how well the network adapts to

additional load.

July 2004. Introduced a major revision for its PROGNOSIS Cisco IP Telephony Manager.

IR has used George Hamilton of The Yankee Group, Robin Gareiss, EVP of Nemertes

Research, David Wall of David Wall Enterprises, and Realtime Publishers to prepare

general articles and some compelling case studies for the IR website and some industry

funnels about the market for and importance of enterprise management topics. Some

eventually explore the attributes which PROGNOSIS for IP Telephony brings to the

market and to actual customer success stories.

There seemed to be no really glowing nationally or internationally publicized reports

about IR except the reporting of their winning the 2006 Australian Consensus Software

Award, a prestigious award given to the new PROGNOSIS for Web Application

software, which provides insight into how well their revenue-generating or critical

online services are functioning for their customers.


Demographics, Interviews, and Satisfaction Factors

Demographics

IR is focusing on key markets that demand high availability, non-stop computing, and

business-critical infrastructure operations in specific vertical industries such as banking,

telecommunications, and government. The vendor has an impressive list of customers.

More notable successes include ATM and POS networks for the banking sector,

including Boston Communications (transaction processing solutions for real-time

wireless subscriber management), State of Washington, Everlink (NYCE), US Bank,

South African electronic transaction switching services provider, BankServ, US-based

State Street Bank, Toronto Stock Exchange, Renfe Spanish Railways, and Singapore’s

Ministry of Defense. Business-critical computing customers include Alstom Australia

Ltd, BAE Systems, Belgacom, Bibliotek, BT Syntegra, DarrComm Network Solutions,

Data Alliance, DB Systems GmbH, Dell Computers, Dimension Data, EDS, Electronic

Arts, Encoda Systems, Getronics, Global Data Systems, HP, IBM Global Services,

Infostream, Intec Communications, Interactive Data, Logical Networks, NCR, Northrup

Grumman IT, Pivot Technologies, Proxima Systems, Raytheon Systems, Southtrust Data

Services, Suntrust Data Systems, Syniverse, Synnex information technologies, T-Chek

Systems, Technosys, TNS Systems Integration, Triaton GmbH, T-Systems International

GmbH, Unicom Shenzhen, Unisys, Verizon Data Services.

Keep in mind that most of these large IR customers do not use network management

software for their PBX and/or IP Telephony deployments, just in their mission-critical

data infrastructures.

IR says that PROGNOSIS for IP Telephony has been deployed in more than 150 of the

world's largest IP telephony implementations including Bank One, NASDAQ, Bellsouth,

Brigham Young University, NCR, CarrAmerica, Internetwork Experts, Dimension Data,

Fannie Mae, Abercrombie and Fitch, Infostream, Global Data Systems, JP Morgan,

Merrill Lynch, Warner Pacific, and USAID in Egypt, mainly in larger (>5,000 endpoints)

installations. A recent NCR PR Newswire Press Release, written by IR and titled

“PROGNOSIS IP Telephony Manager Tops Analyst Firm’s Competitive Solution

Report,” states that PROGNOSIS provides TDM-equivalent performance management

by monitoring calls and performance in real time. These capabilities exist in a number of

competitive vendor solutions, including Cisco’s.

Keep in mind that Cisco sells in 115 countries with offices in 60 countries. Cisco also sells

through a vast array of VARs, distributors, system integrators, web sales, and e-

commerce portals. Network Management is one division of eight major divisions within


Cisco. Cisco is known worldwide for non-stop reliability, availability, world-class

customer service, and unmatched investment protection. IR cannot touch Cisco’s

customer loyalties, unmatched R&D, and world-class services organizations.

Following is a list of very impressive Cisco IPT success stories of which Cisco must be

extremely proud, all with individual hot links. This was taken from the HP and Cisco

Strategic Alliance program for IP Telephony. Click on the links to read the accounts.

Hyundai Marine and Fire Insurance

London Stock Exchange (Video, 32MB, 7 min)

Video transcript

Samsung Life Insurance (PDF,87KB)

Sony Europe

Sony Europe (Video, 9.6MB, 6 min)

Video transcript

St. Olavs Hospital (PDF, 93KB)

Visa (PDF,689KB)

Wolfsburg AG (PDF,158KB)

The Carphone Warehouse

Worcestershire County Council (PDF, 1.6MB)

York Health NHS (PDF, 57KB)

York Health NHS (Video, 15 MB, 5 min)

Video transcript

What Customers Are Saying About IR PROGNOSIS

In customer testimonials, Bobbie Parish — senior IT specialist with the city of

Jacksonville, North Carolina — overhauled his data network to also run voice traffic

(400 users, 240 IP endpoints). He could not afford to purchase the voice management

add-on to CiscoWorks, saying that the added features did not justify the costs. He

wanted the ability to see if performance was degraded, determine Mean Opinion Scores

(MOS), tweak QoS settings, and understand bandwidth capacities. I think Mr. Parish

will see all of these capabilities and much more in Unified Communications

Management Suite.

http://h71028.www7.hp.com/erc/cache/49205-0-0-0-121.aspx?bodycontentparams=76196-0-0-0-121&ERL=true&pageTitle=Success%20story:%20Hyundai%20Marine%20and%20Fire%20Insurance

http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/110594-0-0-0-121.html

http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/downloads/Samsung%20Life%20Insurance.pdf

http://h71028.www7.hp.com/erc/cache/49205-0-0-0-121.aspx?bodycontentparams=96347-0-0-0-121&ERL=true&pageTitle=Success%20story:%20Sony%20Europe

http://www.hp.com/aquarius/videos/HP_Sony.wmv


http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/downloads/St%20Olavs%20Reach%20Bynd_0307.pdf

http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/downloads/Visa%20article.pdf

http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/downloads/Wolfsburg%20AG.pdf

http://h71028.www7.hp.com/erc/cache/49205-0-0-0-121.aspx?bodycontentparams=80103-0-0-0-121&ERL=true&pageTitle=Success%20story:%20The%20Carphone%20Warehouse

http://h71028.www7.hp.com/ERC/downloads/5983-1134EE.pdf

http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/downloads/York%20Health.pdf



In a case study Gary Audin prepared for IR, he states that Brigham Young University’s

large installation consisted of 12 Cisco Call Managers servicing some 7,100 IP phones,

4,800 analog phones, and 700 non-phone devices (including 25,000 LAN ports). It

needed a management system that offered well-designed intuitive screen displays

presenting easily read and easily used information, and that was capable of determining

traffic and problem trend analysis. Also required were capabilities to measure and

report performance in real time, as well as measure utilization for hardware and

software and report call quality on a per-call basis. “The Cisco product was not

considered visible enough, the TRACE tool overloaded with data, and problem tracing

took too long,” Audin reported. The IT manager picked IR PROGNOSIS performance

monitoring. All of this happened through December 2005, prior to Operations Manager

and Service Monitor promotion.

As stated previously, Edison Group customers, Cisco internal, and industry analyst

interviews suggest that PROGNOSIS is actually not intuitive and is difficult to use, and

actually is often not being used (even where it has been deployed), because it is too

complex and hard to understand. This information came from a very large Cisco IPT

installation. An industry analyst told us that PROGNOSIS is “intricate, costly, and does

not scale down well to installations with fewer than 1,500 phones.”

What Integrated Research Has Been Saying About Cisco

Conversations with IR indicate that the vendor considers itself as offering a more in-

depth tool than what HP has developed in their HP/Cisco Smart Plug-In for HP

OpenView (HPOV) Network Node Manager (NNM) and against Cisco ITEM itself.

Their competitive analyses suggest weaknesses in the depth of Cisco products

monitored. Nothing about Operations Manager was given.

According to IR, a common shortcoming with Cisco management tools for Call Manager

Express is that it presents no overt signs of trouble until a problem has become critical,

and that IR provides graphical displays with intuitive navigation. In fact, Cisco UCM

provides all of this information with Operations Manager and Service Monitor. Edison

Group customer interviews suggest that PROGNOSIS is actually not intuitive and is not

easy to use.

IR has been telling customers “It is the only true real-time assessment solution, as it

allows engineers to adjust a router’s quality of service and view the results instantly.

With PROGNOSIS there is no need to wait for a report, decipher it, and then

guesstimate the next incremental change. “Cisco also provides this capability,

employing interfaces that are easier to use and decipher.


IR states that Cisco Internet Protocol Contact Center (IPCC) records enormous amounts

of data about caller and agent activity that can be used to support management decision-

making, and makes a distinction between data and information. Data represents raw

measurements such as counts, times of occurrence, and durations. Information results

when data is analyzed to answer larger questions.

According to an IR publication, “Integrated Research believes it is well-placed with the

recent addition of major Cisco resellers to our channel.

Additionally, the company is setting up a U.S. East Coast office, whose major focus will

be the IPT market. IR will also continue to develop and market the PROGNOSIS suite of

products for HP NonStop OpenView, Windows, UNIX, and Linux environments, “to

keep our company at the forefront of the technology…”

Satisfaction Factors

Large customers ideally want a “turnkey management solution” and for it to be

“out-of-the-box ready.”

They want to see events such as synthetic transactions, QoS activity, and immediate

issues/alerts, server hardware traps and capacity constraints, network capacity

views, call setup time, dial tone delay statistics and their causes, jitter, call

completion ratios, and even morning site operational checks and customizable

reports.

Customers also want their management solution integrated with their change

management and incident management for both their voice and data infrastructures.

Finally, customers want performance management tools that are easy to buy, install,

and use.


IR PROGNOSIS IP Telephony Network

Management Suite

Functional Product Overview

Detailed functionality, obtained from IR, can be used by Cisco technical market planning

and systems engineers/designers to assess UCMS present and future detail capabilities.

NOTE: The screenshots presented in this section are not very legible and should be

referred to only as a quick view of screen user interface, layout, and menus only. Better

shots could not be obtained.

PROGNOSIS Portfolio

PROGNOSIS IP Telephony Assessor (July 2005)

IP Telephony Assessor is a single solution used to assess, predict, report, and prepare

customer data networks for optimized Cisco IPT deployments. It simulates actual VoIP

traffic (synthetic testing), and monitors and records simulated call quality in real time. It

also identifies weaknesses in the network as well as existing hardware limitations, and

can be used to ensure QoS and to optimize network efficiency prior to Cisco IPT

deployment.

Available as a standalone product or as an integrated module on their IP Telephony

Manager. Cisco UCMS does not provide the standalone/integrated module

capability.

Simulates actual VoIP traffic and records network effects. Predicts overall call quality

expected from IP Telephony on an existing data network.

Network settings can be tweaked while tests are underway.

Can be set up to alert users if call quality (MOS score) falls below an acceptable

threshold, which can be administered.

Provides detailed and /or tailored evaluations and manager reports summarizing

network weaknesses and its readiness for IP Telephony.

Provides ongoing post-deployment capacity reporting.

Post-installation testing is used to monitor call-quality levels on an ongoing basis.



Detailed Functionality:

Test templates, pre-defined

Call flow analysis:

Busy hour traffic, blocking or non-blocking, trunk lines

Call Quality Assessment:

MOS Scoring, prediction of call quality over time

Dropped packets

VoIP silence suppression

Simulate call traffic via synthetic transactions

Call delay end-to-end measurement

QoS parameters of DiffServ and 802.1p

NO Tone, noise, and voice sample generation/recording

Configuration assessment:

OS, memory

QoS

Virtual LAN, shared LAN hubs

Speed of interface

NO phone power supply assessment

NO network inventory analysis

Utilization assessment:

CPU and buffer utilization

Bandwidth utilization but NO bandwidth modeling

Auto stress testing based on HTTP, FTP, SQL, SMTP, POP, and DHCP traffic

generation.

NO Remote Installation

NO ROI assessment


PROGNOSIS IP Telephony Manager (Major Revision June 2004)

According to IR’s published financial reports, no new purchases were made from July

2005 through December 2005.

IP Telephony Manager provides ongoing fault and performance monitoring,

troubleshooting support, and performance reporting. Monitors active voice and video

calls, video end-points, and bandwidth consumption in real time.



Target Markets: Enterprises, carriers, and service providers

Certified compatible with: CCM 3.1-3.3, 4.0, 4.1(x) and CCM 5.0

Version 7.07 has tested compatible with Cisco Unified CallManager 3.3(3), 4.0(1) and

4.1(2)

Cisco Unity 4.0(3) and Cisco Unity Bridge 3.0(2)

Unified Call Manager Express, SRST, Unity Express, IPCC (to 8), IPCC Express (to 5)

IP/IVR, Personal Assistant, ICM, and Emergency Responder

Now at version 8.0.1 — not yet certified with Cisco interoperability labs

Automatic installation and configuration

Hierarchical dashboard view of entire network including servers, phones, gateways,

and Unity Express devices

Monitoring Capabilities:

< 1 sec interval polling. Collection on a continuous basis or when a threshold has

been crossed

Error logs

Conference bridge

Monitors transcoders, media termination points, routers, switches, and circuits

Softswitch call details for service providers and carriers

Monitors gateways (H.323) and remote gateway availability, channels, and ports

Individual route pattern availability, views bearer channel status and endpoints

Monitors changes to patterns, lists, groups and gateways and generates alerts if

routes are down or degraded

Provides IP endpoint, system, and inventory metrics

Monitors unregistered, additional, and missing phones

Real-time device monitoring (H.323)

Calls in Progress, delay-to-dial-tone rates, I/O calls by gateway bearer channel

Call setup (H.323)

Call setup performance and functionality

Call volumes (attempts, deliveries, in progress)

NO Call Setup or monitoring (SIP)

NO SIP Proxy or presence server monitoring


End-to-end call quality capabilities:

Centralized QoS management feature monitors all voice calls, call quality, and

availability in real time against administratively defined Service Level

Agreements (SLAs).


Tracks QoS and pre-defined Service Level Agreements (SLAs) set to alert via

dashboard view on detecting breaches in call quality or availability

Shows calls succeeded, refused, failed, and the cause of disconnect

Shows real-time and historical statistics on link:

Lost packets, jitter and latency

Shows active and historical Mean Opinion Scores (MOS) by call.

Shows network traffic by phone

Simulates call traffic synthetic transactions, emulating day-to-day

conditions

Reports MOS scoring, prediction of call quality over time

Service Level Agreement management capabilities:

Measure SLAs by enterprise, business unit, resource

Track customers by class of service

Assign ToS (type of service) to applications

Map customer QoS to performance management

NO Billing and chargeback information

Security capabilities:

Failed login attempts

LDAP server

Changes to critical configurations

Handset security enablement allows identification of IP phones configured for

encryption or authentication

Business-level reporting of office-to-office calls, peak usage hours, call origin,

and route patterns, and phone utilization metrics

Capacity planning capabilities:

Measure SLAs by enterprise, business unit, and resource

Incoming and/or outgoing calls

Loading by route pattern, group, list, and gateway

Alert and escalate when service levels are breeched

NO What-if analysis

NO Correlate baseline utilization with trends for change analysis


NO Forecast call volume statistics

NO Forecast expected gateway usage

Windows component monitoring capabilities:

Windows 2000, SQL Server, IIS Services, TFTP Servers, DNS, and WINS

PROGNOSIS IP Telephony Call Manager Express

Version 8.0 certified with CCM Express 3.2 and 3.3, Cisco Unity Express 2.1.2, and Cisco

SRST 3.2.

Version 7.07 tested compatible with CCM Express 3.0 through 3.2 and Cisco Unity

Express 1.0 through 1.1.2.

Same as IP Telephony Manager, for smaller Express installations.

PROGNOSIS for SRST

Monitors and manages Cisco Survivable Remote Site Telephony (SRST) to ensure calls

will always be up with the proper call quality.

Supports all SRST versions. Manages SRST routers by company and location

Alerts when the WAN link to the CallManager at the central site goes down, or

when connection to the CallManager is lost

Monitors SRST from the moment it comes online

Monitors SRST router performance metrics as an ongoing capacity planning tool to

verifying voice and data performance




Monitors performance of phones and SRST routers in branch offices until the WAN

link comes up, or until phones can re-register with a centralized Cisco CallManager

Uses same monitoring and management techniques as IP Telephony Manager

PROGNOSIS IPCC Management Reporting

Gives real-time visibility into the performance and throughput of Cisco IPCC Enterprise

and IPCC Express contact centers. Provides, at a glance, every detail of every call that

comes in and goes out, combining both Cisco IPCC and non-IPCC data. Supplements

standard WebView reporting tools in Cisco IPCC Enterprise and the two reporting plug-

ins in Cisco IPCC Express. Includes customized reports feature.



PROGNOSIS IP Telephony Smart Link Integration for HP OpenView

Integrated with HP Network Node Manager console to perform readiness assessment,

pre-deployment assurance testing, real-time performance management, troubleshooting,

and ongoing VoIP capacity planning. PROGNOSIS Smart Link Integration (SLI) gives

Network Operations Center personnel capabilities to view real-time, IP telephony events

in the NNM alarms browser. The SLI can then be used to launch PROGNOSIS IP

Telephony Manager for continued troubleshooting of a selected event.



Cisco Unified Communications Management Suite

Cisco has listened to its market, its customer base, and its competitor’s customers, which

has resulted in the development of the Unified Communications Management Suite, a

new generation of IP Telephony network management tools. Without a doubt, this suite

will provide an easier-to-use and more functional agentless suite of tailored applications

to specifically address needs that Cisco’s Unified Communications IP Telephony

products and functionality require.

CUCM will ultimately include its own Readiness Assessment Manager, Provisioning

Manager, CiscoWorks Voice Manager (available now), Service Statistics Manager,

Service Monitor, and Operations Manager which have various release dates by year end

2006. This report will compare capabilities of Operations Manger/Services Manager

functionality to PROGNOSIS offers only.

Functional Product Overview (General)

CUCM Suite Portfolio

Network Readiness Assessment

Cisco has offered its Lifecycle Unified Communications Services for some time. Part of

Lifecycle, the Network Readiness Assessment and Optimization services assess the

readiness of an existing customer data network infrastructure to support Cisco Unified

Communications IP Telephony, provide network configuration and design

recommendations, and provide an execution plan if desired. Assessments address

network hardware, software, traffic, capacity, network design, IP addressing, QoS,

bandwidth, availability, scalability, security, cabling, power, and existing network

services. CUCM Readiness Assessment Manager will tailor these capabilities to the IP

Telephony scope further by predicting overall call quality over the network, and will

perform best practice analysis to ensure that the network is ready for voice.

Cisco Network Assistant 3.0/4.0

This is an unheralded capability which presents a global topological view of an entire

network, even with little IP phones hanging off the switching infrastructures. This nifty

Assistant can make configuration and easily grasped security-level changes to the

switches’ individual port structure. It has the added capability to invoke the Device

Manager which, with Smartports roles activation, can set up and manage IP endpoints,

and can be used for monitoring port utilization, packet errors, and historical trend data,

examining alert logs/details with recommendations as to possible cause of alerts. A

tremendously unique and useful feature icon call “Resolve” actually repairs


configuration problems or guides the user through repair steps. (PROGNOSIS lacks this

capability.) Another very useful feature allows for dragging and dropping software

upgrades onto the topology icons representing individual network devices, then steps

unfamiliar users through the upgrade process, a much easier process than TFTP

processes. (PROGNOSIS lacks support this capability.)

Cisco Voice Provisioning Tool

This tool is used for moves, adds, and changes, which are greatly simplified by

consolidating telephony and voice mail MOVs all on one screen. The CVPT replaces

approximately six discrete CM/Unity update screens. It can perform multiple (bulk)

MOVs in one operation, and allows the use of device attribute templates. This is a

tremendous time saver and can be operated by less knowledgeable administrators. This

description goes beyond the scope of PROGNOSIS and, to some extent, this report but

PROGNOSIS lacks this capability (other than monitoring).

A main point here is that Cisco has a superior set of multifaceted provisioning,

monitoring, and diagnosis applications which are not really exploited to any degree.

Operations Manager and Service Monitor

Provides a very scalable (with distributed or centralized deployment), unified, user-

friendly, and straightforward view into network health (much more user-friendly than

PROGNOSIS) in terms of operational status (Service Level views) of the entire Cisco IP

Telephony communications and underlying infrastructure network. (PROGNOSIS does

not support as many data infrastructure elements) It continuously monitors and

evaluates all voice and data elements by using open interfaces such as HTTP, AvvidXL,

SOAP, and SNMP without the use of software device or cluster agents (PROGNOSIS

must use agents on each platform monitored). Service quality alerts are presented

directly to OM screens for dashboard-type drilldown and further diagnostic testing.

These include IP phone MOS degradation with Service Monitors installed, WAN and

node-to-node drilldown diagnostic tests, and IP Service Level Agreement tests, and can

be sent on to a higher-level Manager of Managers and to one or many e-mail addresses

and even pagers (PROGNOSIS does not provide pager alerts). These capabilities are

helpful in reducing administrative overhead for network managers.

OM provides simulated synthetic as well as real-time, end-to-end, and emergency call

testing between phones, over links, voice gateways, and between conference connection

links and messaging systems, along with additional contextual information for trouble

isolation. OM provides unique integrated context-sensitive links (with device, user, and

credential synchronization) into other CiscoWorks platforms including CW Resource

Manager Essential, CW Campus Manager, and Cisco View. Even more tools are

presented in pull-down menu form, including SRST, dial tone, node-to-node, and path


analysis testing, as well as CMExpress and Gateway administration. Service Monitor

allows tracking of endpoint changes (MAC) and inventory status. (Cisco does much

more diagnostic testing than PROGNOSIS).

Strengths of Cisco, Weaknesses of PROGNOSIS®

This section enumerates the strengths and key differentiators of Cisco Unified

Communications Management Suite when compared to IR PROGNOSIS®. It presents a

list of CUCM Suite capabilities that are superior to what PROGNOSIS offers or that are

lacking in IR’s offering altogether. Note that nearly all the capabilities offered by

PROGNOSIS are offered in some form by CUCM. CUCM does not provide an IP

Telephony Manager standalone or integrated module capability for its Telephony

Assessor.

NOTE: Some of the managements applications listed for Cisco generally require the very

latest releases of Call Managers and Unity solutions.

It is not known at this time whether Cisco provides these particular capabilities that are

lacking in the PROGNOSIS offerings:

NO Tone, noise and voice sample generation/recording

NO Phone power supply assessment

NO Network inventory analysis

NO bandwidth modeling

NO Remote installation (??)

NO ROI assessment

NO Call setup or monitoring (SIP)

NO SIP proxy or presence server monitoring

NO Billing and chargeback information

NO What-if analysis (CUCM can simulate certain scenarios, though)

NO Correlate baseline utilization with trends for change analysis

NO Forecast call volume statistics

NO Forecast expected gateway usage

Cisco CUCM network management strengths:

PROGNOSIS lacks the unique and very useful “Resolve” feature for repairing

configuration problems while providing users with guided steps in the process.


PROGNOSIS lacks easy-to-use drag-and-drop software update capabilities.

Cisco’s moves, adds, and changes (MOVs) are greatly simplified by consolidating

telephony and voice mail MOVs all on one screen and allowing bulk template-based

provisioning.

Cisco has a superior set of multifaceted provisioning, monitoring, and diagnostic

capabilities.

Cisco provides a very scalable (with distributed or centralized deployment), unified,

and extremely user-friendly and straightforward view into network health. Much

more ergonomically pleasing than the rougher-edged PROGNOSIS operation.

PROGNOSIS is said to be very user unfriendly, to the point that customers are

actually shying away from its deployed use.

Cisco does a much better job of providing multi-level physical and logical views,

from macro and drill-down levels to dashboard views and assessments.

PROGNOSIS, in its Service Level views, does not support nearly as many data

infrastructure devices and elements as does Cisco.

PROGNOSIS monitoring is done without the use of overhead-laden device agents,

especially in a large network of many Cisco Call Manager clusters. Cisco uses open

interfaces, SNMP, and syslog notifications. Provisioning in PROGNOSIS is very

difficult and time-consuming.

OM provides unique integrated, context-sensitive links (with device, user, and

credential synchronization) into other CiscoWorks and other Cisco Systems®

Management systems platforms, including CW Resource Manager Essential, CW

Campus Manager, and Cisco View. Even more tools are presented in pull-down

menu form. This superb capability allows for further and deeper diagnostic

capabilities.

Cisco does much more total and very intuitive diagnostic testing than PROGNOSIS.

PROGNOSIS’ feature list states that it cannot be remotely installed. It is unclear what

this means in the context of network and/or off-network PROGNOSIS monitoring

operation.

Additional significant differences:

IR does not discover and offer device inventory deployment, real-time monitoring,

and further diagnostic testing for calls/endpoints using SIP protocols, nor for devices

acting as SIP Proxy servers or SIP Unified Presence servers. Cisco offers these

capabilities, and SIP interests and sales have been increasing, especially with the

recent T-Systems (and even IR) involvement in the massive Deutsche Bank

acquisitions and IPT rollout.


IR does not send threshold-based multiple service quality alert notifications to

pagers. Alerts can be sent on to a higher-level Manager of Managers and to one or

many e-mail addresses and even pagers. These capabilities are helpful in reducing

administrative overhead for network managers.

Operations Manager offers deeper methods of device tracking, probing, and testing

along with providing more information around IP/SIP phone inventory and status

changes, while offering a large variety of reports associated with MOVs in very large

networks.

Cisco has a much better and proven approach in providing capabilities for Managed

Service Providers (MSP). OM can display, from one console, Service Level views of

multiple customers with nifty dashboard drill-down capabilities into each and every

customer network, cluster, nodes-to-node IP SLAs, infrastructure, and endpoints

MOS scoring. It is very easy to visualize and use.

Operations Manager provides connectivity and registration-related outages affecting

SIP and SCCP protocol-based endpoints. PROGNOSIS does not go into the detail,

nor does it monitor SIP infrastructure devices, which CUCM does.

Cisco provides much better means of visualizing the business views and operational

impacts that network degradation can incur in overall network health monitoring.

Where will IR Focus its IP Telephony Management Resources?

IR is focusing additional R&D and sales efforts on the Cisco IPT management landscape,

both large and small. Keep in mind that IR has actually been in the “lifecycle mode” of

the IP telephony network management market for only nine months, but has been

managing Cisco IPT for a few years now with a number of impressive wins. According

to IR, by December 2006 they will have PROGNOSIS monitoring for Avaya and “most

likely” by early Q2 2007 will have monitoring for Nortel IP Telephony. It is highly

prudent that IR will also add SIP monitoring capabilities within the next year or so.

Look for IR to enhance its software, sales efforts, and pricing structure for PROGNOSIS

for Call Manager Express and SRST, in order to compete with Cisco primarily in the

<500 station market, and also in the <5,000 station market. They will compete more and

more directly with Cisco’s own sales teams and product offerings, along with other

companies. They will also retool to include management of networks that use more

business value-based applications in intensive operations, such as better integration

with Interactive Voice Response (IVR), video/audio multi-conferencing over IP, instant

messaging/web-based and contact/call center click-to-call scenarios, and meeting place

solutions. Also expect IR to incorporate monitoring of larger web-enabled applications

from SAP, Oracle, and Siebel on IP screen phones or PC portals, using speech-to-text

and text-to-speech monitoring and management techniques.


IR has really missed SIP trunking and SIP endpoint management and Presence and

Collaborative applications, along with rapid advances in IP endpoint applications, as

being important future aspects of advancing the state of IP Telephony. It will, however,

evolve these capabilities into their management suite in the next six months to two

years.

IR will also increase emphasis on VoIP for large systems integrators, carriers, service

providers, and major enterprises (including VoBroadband as other avenues for large-

scale telephony and video management), along with investing in add-on products for

existing customers. IR will always maintain a wait-in-the-wings follower position, which

will allow it to see what evolves then quickly try to manage that, without developing

industry-applauding leapfrog innovations of its own.

The use of integrated performance monitoring and management techniques, long a part

of the data computing world from which Cisco’s heritage stems, is generally regarded

and emphasized now as required for IPT. This is true even though IPT is still evolving,

under development, and under heavy evaluation by customers. Edison Group predicts

that by end 2008 the number of vendors in this field will have been halved, with many of

the prominent vendor technologies of 2006 either absorbed into major and minor IP

Telephony players of today, consolidated with other network management vendors, or

rendered entirely obsolete. As it matures, network and security management will

become an intensely competitive arena.


Implications for Cisco and Next Steps

During the research phase for this study, discovering the sole general repository for

Integrated Research made it much easier to find out relevant information about the IR

PROGNOSIS network management offering than it had been to drill down and find

apples-to-apples information, case studies, papers, brochures, et. al., about Cisco’s

current and future landscape of network management offerings (including the benefits

and details, from assessment to post-deployment). We were obliged to consult many

papers, many well-known VoIP reference sites, many press releases, and to compile

information from a variety of Cisco sources that included Cisco Services sites as well as

test lab reports. Only when all this was all synthesized did the awesome potential and

capabilities that Cisco brings to this part of IP Telephony become clear. Edison Group’s

process may be useful to Cisco in their marketing process.

Cisco has a window of opportunity to develop tactical marketing plans in advance of IR

(and others), to counter moves while advancing its current performance management

portfolio with even better world class tools than it already has. It is Edison Group’s

opinion that Cisco has not done enough to exploit the strengths of its entire systems and

network management portfolios, especially for large customers. The context is in terms

of promoting/bundling for large, very large, and MSP customer bases the real strengths

of current and future Network Readiness Lifecycle Assessment offerings, Cisco Network

Assistant 3.0, Cisco current and future Voice and Provisioning Managers, along with the

very strong (and easy to use) capabilities of Operations Manager and Service Monitor.

Perhaps a theme of “Cisco for Life” or something catchy along those lines should be

employed…a real promotion for these segments. Because of the modular architectural

designs of these offerings, bundling for mid-sized and small market customers can be

easily accomplished around the same theme.

Quick, hard-hitting and easily digested Sales Bulletins (CD, e-mail/web, binder formats)

and perhaps an Americas and EMEA campaign stressing IR myths and how to combat

IR in scalable solutions, also stressing Cisco’s world-class services organization, could be

employed. Efforts should be made to expose and raise awareness of the strengths of

Cisco and weaknesses of PROGNOSIS. Suggestions would be to develop a few more

white papers and case studies specifically addressing Unified Communications and

Service Provider performance network management, for sales proposals and for

customer leave-behinds. These should include as much pricing information as

appropriate, perhaps pointing out benefits of Cisco’s higher pricing structure.

Other suggestions would be to carefully prepare a streaming web ppt digest and/or

conference for sales personnel and for customers at the beginning or on the edge. This


should not just address IR, but other NM competition against the “new, improved, and

highly capable” Cisco Unified Communications Management Suite.

Enterprises, carriers, and service providers will continue to focus on business efficiencies

and meeting business application needs. Along with their need for education and

direction to migrate to IP Telephony, they have a secondary and pressing need to

understand and improve the quality of these business and application drivers. This is

where and why they invest in management tools to help improve their businesses both

internally and externally. Cisco should evangelize IP Telephony management as a

“critical” part of customer network infrastructure investment. Cisco has a superior set of

multifaceted (and linked) assessment, provisioning, monitoring, testing, and diagnosis

applications which are exploited not nearly as much as they should be. Combining these

together in some sort of tiered venues could certainly go a long way in convincing IPT

customer markets that Cisco has truly superior offerings in the total environment of

network provisioning and performance management.

Product enhancement suggestions would be to continually focus on more intuitive,

easier to sell, easier to install, integrate, use, manage, and maintain performance and

systems management for all Unified Communications management systems. Cisco

could look at furthering real-time root cause analysis, rogue access point and

unauthorized application discovery, automated recovery management techniques, and

automated threshold and corrective action scenarios for its world-class and market-

leading IP Telephony portfolio.


Conclusions

Integrated Research (IR), a company of some 120 employees worldwide and

approximately $30M in yearly revenue with a good cash position, has been in the

business of network performance management, mainly in business computing markets,

since 1988, and boasts well-known large and established customers for this market.

However, IR has only been in IP Telephony (and, specifically, Cisco Unified

Communications IP Telephony) since June 2004. That is an entirely new arena, which

they have been in for less than two years. By contrast, Cisco has been in IP Telephony

since 1997 when it acquired Selsius, and has been in the data management world since

its inception in 1986.

IR’s PROGNOSIS suite of IP Telephony network management is new, still maturing, and

significantly limited when its capabilities are compared to those of Cisco’s Unified

Communications Management Suite Operations Manager and Service Monitor. Even

some customers are limiting their use of PROGNOSIS due to its non-intuitive and

complicated interface. IR must aggressively seek opportunities with industry leaders,

partners, and integrators in enterprise, carrier, and service provider markets to stay

afloat. It will look to collaborate and spend more resources on technical projects and

joint-marketing initiatives, and to evolve and scale its technology not only to serve a

more diverse customer base but also to serve the individual needs of its business

partners and integrators. IR must also make itself more visible through both mass and

target marketing campaigns, to a larger variety of customers. This will require

considerable resources, but it will take place.

Edison Group research, interviews, and comparative portfolio analyses recommend that

Cisco Product Marketing make sales organizations and potential customers more aware

of how to combat IR in competitive situations with targeted myth-busting and factual

sales bulletins, perhaps a “Cisco for life” campaign, and “what if” questions stressing

distinct and thought-provoking competitive advantages of Unified Communications

Management Suite over IR. Suggested media include targeted Webcast and/or

MeetingPlace conferences and single-sheet bulletins, white papers, case studies, and

customer leave-behinds specifically evangelizing a “new and improved or next-gen”

Cisco IPT Unified Communications Management Suite as it rolls out. These could also

be used for trade show speaker forums.

Internet Protocol Telephony emerged and has evolved within the past ten years. Cisco

has been their since its beginning. The same can be said for managing converged

networks so they work together and act as harmoniously as did the voice

communications of old. The use of detailed and quality-focused network performance


management is an absolute requirement for future business network efficiencies and

applications quality. Businesses are beginning to realize this. Cisco’s Operations

Manager and Service Monitor and Unified Communications Management Suite are right

on target. Cisco is beyond the curve and must package, position, and promote what it

already has when faced with determined and formidable competitors such as Integrated

Research’s PROGNOSIS.

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