New Release Includes Support for Multiple Concurrent Broadband Circuits with Failover, Redundant Service Provider Gateway Access, Automatic Telephone Number Failover Redundancy and Enhancements to the Daily NOC Backup Service
FOR MORE INFORMATION
John Gates, Elevate Communications, (617) 861-3651
PORTSMOUTH, NH, January 22, 2007—Whaleback Systems™ announced a new release of its managed CrystalBlue Voice Service™ that allows Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) to benefit from enterprise-class business continuity, reliability and disaster recovery features.
“This new release builds on our strategy to deliver customers a unique offer that blends the best of hosted IP / IP Centrex and premises-based PBX solutions. Our new, best-in-class availability and reliability features provide major advantages to SMBs over traditional hosted or PBX solutions,” said Mark Galvin, Whaleback Founder, President and CEO. “CrystalBlue reshapes the telephony economics for SMBs by providing an insurance policy for PBX and PSTN access redundancy at a fraction of the cost of alternative solutions. SMBs can count on the levels of reliability that were previously only available to large enterprise customers with large budgets and IT staffs.”
A wide selection of new reliability and availability features support business continuity even in the event of disastrous events, such as building fires, floods or earthquakes. “SMBs rely on their phone systems to run their businesses, and this release hardens the CrystalBlue Voice Service to support ongoing business operations despite unplanned circumstances such as weather-related calamities, power outages or Internet blockages,” explained Galvin.
According to David Lemelin, Senior Analyst for market research and analysis firm In-Stat, “SMBs traditionally viewed business continuity and disaster recovery as something they should be doing, but it often did not get done due to lack of resources. This has changed in the last couple of years to the point where SMBs are now aggressively implementing business continuity and disaster recovery plans. They are seeking business-grade solutions from trusted providers that require minimal internal resourcing. Whaleback's solution fits that model.”
The new features and services are available to all locations of multi-site customers, allowing them to cost-effectively provide linear scaling of telephony services for each location without having to over-provision hosted IP services to each location or purchase and maintain a PBX. Customers with multiple sites can ensure business continuity of voice services at costs that are 30-80 percent lower than alternative solutions.
Adding new sites is easy and economical, and SMBs do not need to purchase expensive hardware for each location. They can benefit from high-quality voice services at remote locations that gain the same carrier-grade levels of reliability and redundancy available at the headquarters location. Customers can avoid investments in increased data center capacity, additional IT personnel and carrier contracts for each location. Customers with multiple sites can also benefit from redundant service provider gateway access as well as main number and Direct Inward Dialing rerouting between locations.
According to John DuBois, CEO of Whaleback channel partner KableLink Communications, “Customers don’t have to buy PBXs that are larger than their needs to obtain basic levels of redundancy. We can now offer customers substantially greater redundancy and availability functionality for both their voice service and the IP PBX while avoiding truck rolls, and Whaleback’s monitoring of system status right down to the handset allows our customers to benefit from carrier-grade telephony services while avoiding capital costs and minimizing monthly operational costs.”
Since its initial release in February, 2006, the CrystalBlue Voice Service has supported robust reliability and availability features, including nightly backup of the premises database, continuous pinging of deployed SMB 1500 IP PBXs to monitor call-quality down to the handset to ensure pristine bandwidth conditions and 24x7 centralized monitoring. The following are some of the additional features included in this new release:
Multiple Broadband Circuits with Failover allows customers to deploy up to three secure voice-only broadband circuits for terminating local and long-distance phone calls, fax messages and related Whaleback voice applications. Each of the circuits is logically associated with the other circuits, allowing customers to load share traffic across multiple broadband connections. The customer phone numbers are not associated with any of the physical circuits but are logically associated with the SMB 1500 IP PBX deployed at the customer site. For example, an SMB could provision cable, DSL and fiber to the premises circuits from three different broadband providers and deliver carrier-grade redundancy for voice traffic with the SMB 1500 automatically balancing the load across all three broadband circuits.
Redundant Service Provider Gateway Access provides—as a standard built-in capability—two separate call setup and call tear down paths to the Whaleback backbone network. The SMB 1500 IP PBX deployed at the customer location is configured to connect with two separate IP addresses. A single broadband connection provides access to a primary and a secondary Whaleback Network Gateway, and calls will be dynamically switched from the primary to the secondary gateway if delays are encountered. This feature delivers major redundancy and availability advantages and allows customers to balance traffic to ensure ongoing, high-quality voice calls.
Automatic Telephone Number Failover Redundancy allows the main number and any Direct Inward Dial numbers to be automatically rerouted to secondary numbers in the event of a failure, such as one caused by lost power, lost broadband connections or a building fire. It enables business continuity by allowing phone and fax calls to be automatically rerouted in response to outages.
Direct Inward Dial Intercept for Unassigned Numbers allows customers to reserve Direct Inward Dial numbers for future growth. Unassigned Direct Inward Dial numbers default to the main company phone number. If a caller dials a number that has not yet been assigned, the call will be automatically routed to the auto attendant without the need for the caller to hang up and dial the main number to reach the organization.
Network Time Protocol (NTP) Support allows the CrystalBlue Network Time Server in the Whaleback Network Operations Center to synchronize the time and date for SMB 1500 IP PBXs, Executive IP Handsets and Executive IP Softphones throughout the world. It enables enterprise-wide synching of time and date without the need for IT staff intervention to set the time for the main site and offset the time/date for remote phones that can be located multiple time zones away.
Voicemail Prompt, Personalized Automated Attendant and User Voicemail Greeting Backup are now included in the nightly Whaleback Network Operations Center (NOC) customer database backups for each customer site.
Voicemail Message Store Backup allows customers to automatically backup voicemail messages to their email server and/or to a USB storage device.
“Delivering enterprise-class managed voice services requires a multi-layered strategy that allows customers to harden their voice service without having to jump from a small key system to a high-end PBX and over-provision PSTN access,” said Galvin. “This release demonstrates how our managed voice service provides the business continuity for voice services that companies increasingly need to protect ongoing operations, and it delivers redundancy and reliability advantages that cannot be matched by either a Hosted IP service or a premises-based PBX in the market today.”
Existing customers will be automatically upgraded to the new release at no extra charge. Whaleback manages and monitors all deployments, and the Whaleback Network Operations Center will upgrade all existing customers without any need for user intervention. All of the new features will be immediately available to new CrystalBlue customers. The optional Multiple Broadband Circuit offering is available starting at $325 per month.
is a Managed Service Provider (MSP) and the pioneering developer of the first business phone solution built from the ground up for broadband. Unlike traditional systems, the Whaleback CrystalBlue Voice Service is 100 percent premises-based and software-driven. It includes the only IP PBX with Key System Unit features and Road Warrior Functionality. Whaleback's all-inclusive, unlimited domestic calling package makes the most advanced technology immediately affordable for companies that need between 5 and 1,500 phone stations. The Whaleback service is available through partnerships with channel partners and VARs.
