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District Government Selects Xelor Software to Provide Reliable Cisco IP Telephony Over Converged Cisco Network

Posted on: Wednesday, 25 January 2006, 12:00 CST

Xelor Software(TM) today announced that the Mid Beds District Council, a regional governmental authority for 150,000 households in the United Kingdom's Bedfordshire County, employs XelorRate(TM) Service Quality Manager software to ensure the reliability, performance and quality of its IP telephony over a converged network.

XelorRate software is the only service quality management (SQM) solution that unleashes the power of an enterprise's existing networking infrastructure, enforces service quality policy end-to-end, and controls network resources for realtime IP communications on a proactive basis. The software eliminates the common quality of service (QoS) demons of IP telephony deployments caused by packet delay, loss, jitter, latency and competition for bandwidth between data and realtime applications.

The Mid Beds District Council selected XelorRate software as part of its management plan to provide enhanced citizen services and operational savings by switching from circuit-switched voice to IP telephony. For the plan to be successful, the Council realized that its new Cisco CallManager had to consistently deliver realtime communications that were at least as good as the old-style PSTN system it was replacing.

"XelorRate software serves as the foundation of our enterprise-wide quality of service program for voice communications," said Clive Jones, who is responsible for customer service and information technology for the council. "The software offers peace of mind, because it guarantees the prioritization of voice, regardless of what else is happening on the network. This means that our employees and citizens don't experience dropped or poor quality phone calls, even when someone else on the network transmits a large file or initiates a data run with 150,000 tax bills."

In addition, XelorRate software has dramatically reduced the management headaches required for maintaining an effective realtime communications system. The software uses SNMP to automatically discover and map network elements, ports and topology and then configures these elements according to industry best practices and the network equipment provider's reference manual for QoS.

By continuously reacting to changes in the network, XelorRate software has simplified network operations and allowed the Council to reduce the technical headcount required to maintain the converged network.

"The dirty little secret is that IT managers don't continually update QoS policies as the network changes or new elements and endpoints are introduced," said Jones. "Without XelorRate software, it would be almost impossible to keep up with all the network changes, especially in our situation where we have employees switching desks, working from remote locations and even working from home on softphones."

The effectiveness of XelorRate software in providing PSTN-equivalent voice communications has allowed the delivery of a number of innovative citizen services while also saving on infrastructure, manpower and ongoing communications costs. The software allows the Mid Beds District Council to unleash its existing Cisco data network investments to:

-- Provide more convenient access to governmental services with local points of presence, including small offices and video kiosks that are no more than 10 minutes from any household;

-- Offer timely, interactive access to local and regional officials;

-- Resolve 80% of all citizen inquiries during the first interaction;

-- Deliver realtime access to government databases and geographical information systems with time-sensitive information, such as the locations of flood plains, petroleum storage sites, possible airline flight paths, evacuation routes, crime statistics and much more;

-- Provide flexibility for employees to work from any office or use softphones at home.

With XelorRate Service Quality Manager software, the Mid Beds District Council has avoided the dropped calls, voice quality issues and management problems that can occur in medium-to-large scale IP telephony deployments. The Council expects that their deployment architecture, strategies and results will be submitted to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister as a migration strategy to help the United Kingdom's 388 other district councils migrate to IP telephony.

About Xelor Software

Xelor Software Inc., headquartered in Salem, N.H., is the developer of the first proactive solutions for service quality management (SQM) for enterprises deploying IP telephony systems. The software is the only SQM solution that unleashes the power of an enterprise's existing networking infrastructure, enforces service quality policy end-to-end, and controls network resources for realtime IP communications on a proactive basis. More information on Xelor Software is available at http://www.xelorsoftware.com.

Xelor Software, Xelor and XelorRate are trademarks of Xelor Software Inc. All other products or services referenced may be trademarks or service marks of their respective companies or organizations.

Source: Business Wire

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