Caleb Mardini: Hello. My name is Caleb and I work with
Office 365 for Microsoft. I’m speaking with Tim from Nectar
to discuss monitoring and reporting for Skype for Business.
We’re going to talk about how partners can recognize when
their customer would benefit from leveraging a network
assessment solution to help their organizations realize the
benefits of Office 365 and Skype for Business.
Tim, thank you for coming in today. Your company has
certified their solution for Skype for Business. Can you tell
me about both the Skype Operations Framework network
assessment and the broader monitoring platform for Skype
for Business? Why would this be important for a customer?
Tim Armstrong: Thanks so much for having me, Caleb. It’s
great to talk with you about this and I think it’s an area
that a lot of enterprise customers are paying attention to
right now. Really, users and enterprises alike all want the
same thing. They want Skype to just work. As you see
professionals, we know there’s a lot going on in the
background to make it just work. But great user experiences
are enabled by a healthy UC environment. And there are
really three primary domains of UC health when it comes to
Skype for Business.
First, there’s the application domain. In an Office 365
environment, that’s the portion that’s represented by the
services that Microsoft supplies. But many enterprise
customers also have a lot of on-premise components to
their UC solution. So, that could also encompass servers
and other application specific components like SBCs,
for example. Second, there is the network health domain.
Most UC professionals recognize how critical a healthy
network connection is to a great Skype for Business
experience. Networks are complicated and multi-faceted
though and have a lot of different zones of responsibility.
So, I mean that said, most of us never really see that
complexity. It’s a little bit like electricity, right? We just
expect that the network is going to work and most people
don’t really care how.
Mardini: Yeah.
Armstrong: So, it’s up to the UC professionals to make
sure that they have both the knowledge and the tool set
that’s needed to properly look after you know this really
critical UC health domain. And as a matter of fact, this area
is so important that the Skype Operations Framework
specifically calls out the need to test the health of the
network for UC traffic prior to deployment.
Mardini: So, the application domain and the network domain
are both critical UC health areas. What’s the third area that
partners and enterprises should pay attention to? L00:02:26 Armstrong: The third UC health domain is the end user
environment and this domain is particularly challenging
because it involves so many different variables really.
Users could be connected on any number of different
devices, software versions, network connections and
locations, and there’s really different, very little control
that IT can exercise over t his domain. So, it becomes
critical to look at quality trends and user behavior patterns
over time to figure out where you can best focus your
user education, adoption, and policy efforts.
Mardini: So, what would Nectar’s background in this space be?
Armstrong: Yeah. Nectar’s been in the business of providing
software tools to UC professionals for over 10 years. Our
founders and most of our team today comes from the
background of being directly involved in UC operations. Long
before Nectar was a tools provider, the company that’s now
called Nectar was actually a system integrator and a managed
service provider. So, it’s a space that we know very well and
we have a deep understanding of the needs of partners in this
area.
Mardini: And so, how does Nectar’s solution stand out as a
monitoring and reporting solution for Office 365?
Armstrong: This is obviously an important question. There are
a lot of tools on the market that do reporting and analytics.
In fact, Microsoft as the new advanced analytics tool for
Skype for Business is being enabled for cloud users.
Mardini: Mmm hmm.
Armstrong: There are analytics tools you can get from Office.
There are a number of different reporting options for hybrid
or on-premise deployments and we think this is great.
Knowing that you have poor quality calls in your network is
a good start and there are a lot of tools that can help you
learn that. Our platform, however, really helps you take that
next step to actually fix the problem. It’s helpful to know
that you had a call with a low MOS score, for example, but
it’s really much more helpful if you know exactly where in
the media path that call quality started to drop off and,
specifically, what network event or what network element
caused that to happen. And that’s were Nectar comes in.
We do much more than monitor and report; we correlate
that insight and analytics across those three UC health
domains I mentioned earlier to give administrators
actionable information that they can use to identify and
remedy issues that are impacting user experience.
Mardini: So, how would you approach a customer with all
of this? What are they asking for when they seek you out?
Armstrong: Yeah. I would say that most people seek our
solution for two primary reasons. The first is while they’re
doing due diligence ahead of a deployment or a cloud
migration. These are the folks that find us because we’re
one of a very small number of tools listed on the Skype
operations framework site, thanks to that certification work
that you referenced earlier.
Mardini: I’m glad Nectar has found value in the IT Pro tool
certification program. What’s the second scenario?
Armstrong: The second scenario we frequently see is when
an enterprise realizes that reporting alone does not help
solve a lot of the problems and they’re looking for a more
powerful tool to help support real UC operations.
You know, those are the two big reasons, but beyond that,
I think it’s critical to point out that most of our customers
have come to us via our channel. There are a lot of system
integrators and service providers that use Nectar in the
background to manage their client environments.
Mardini: Well, when talking to a customer, sometimes
within an organization, there’s say maybe an IT department
that’s concerned with one set of issues and then maybe for
the business line, there might be others like maybe a CEO,
they might have other interests in mind. Do you have
different approaches for talking to these two different
audiences?
Armstrong: We definitely do and I find that there can be
a little bit of confusion or ambiguity sometimes around the
terminology used in our space, so I think it’s important to
start with a little bit of definition and, depending on your
role, you’re exactly right—you have different needs out of
a platform like us. I think it’s helpful to break it down into
really three simple use case scenarios. There is proactive
UC operations. There is reactive UC support. And there’s
historical analysis of user experience indicators over time.
And we can label those three use case scenarios very
simply as monitoring, diagnostics and reporting.
Mardini: Okay.
Armstrong: As a general rule, I would find that most
executives and business leaders are most interested in
reporting, that final category, while most UC administrators
are more interested in the monitoring and diagnostics
capabilities of Nectar’s platform.
Mardini: With reporting, a business owner is interested in
learning about what exactly?
Armstrong: Yeah. When executives or other leaders in an
organization make a decision to roll out Skype for Business,
they’re really interested in just making sure that users are
having a good experience and that they’re actually using it.
So, at a high level, that’s what senior leadership is most
often interested in, but the depth of the data is all there.
And so, people like to know, for example, how user
experience correlates to things like device choices or
connection types, Wi-Fi or wired or maybe the operating
system client, Windows or Mac, how does that impact the
user experience, for example. They also want to know
what capabilities are being used. Is it just voice calls or
IM? Are people doing a lot of video? Are people using the
app sharing capabilities? There’s so much to dive into here,
but really at the end of the day, the focus is really about
user experience and adoption and I think that’s what
executives are looking for.
Mardini: Wow, okay. That’s providing a lot of insight. So,
for monitoring and diagnostics, what would be the most
relevant to a unified communications administrator?
Armstrong: Yeah, these are the people that have to roll up
their sleeves, right? And network issues are really what
get most of the focus here. They’re difficult to identify,
frankly, without the right tools. But this area of proactive
UC operations really extends into other infrastructure that’s
providing some component of the UC services as well
beyond the network, so this could be anything from legacy
voice platforms, which tend to stick around for a very long
time, to session border controllers or SBAs. Many enterprises
also maintain some Skype for Business capability on-premise
and so, in those cases, the real focus for monitoring tends
to be on the various Skype server roles that the enterprise
has or that their service provider is responsible for managing
for them.
Mardini: Okay. So, you can do a lot to help the customer,
but how else would a partner benefit from working with
you. Are there resale opportunities? What are your
partner benefits?
Armstrong: Absolutely. I mean, really, any part who wants
to be in the business of helping to deliver great user
experiences on Skype can benefit from using or enabling
their clients with our tools. And generally speaking, our
partners fall into two categories. First, I would say we have
what we call our reseller partners and they typically
transact licenses directly to an end customer who’s using
our platform. And those partners typically leverage our
partner and professional services team for scoping and
delivering solutions and they can benefit from the margin
on the resale of our licenses and support. And I find that
these partners have varying levels of internal knowledge
and technical expertise on our platform.
Mardini: So, resale is certain an option of partners that see
value in the tools but maybe don’t have the staff to focus
in this area. What about partners that wanna focus more
on services?
Armstrong: Right. We also have our solution or service
provider partners. These partners typically sell some sort
of high value, ongoing managed service to their clients,
utilizing Nectar in the background. So, the partner focus
is on extending great services that Microsoft offers, for
example, in the cloud all the way through the different
zones of responsibility to the end user on the enterprise
network. In these scenarios, the client is buying a partner
service and may not even know that Nectar is providing
the tool set in the background. In my opinion, this model
represents the strongest opportunity for partners to realize
recurring revenue of long term relevance to their clients.
Mardini: Does Nectar offer a certification program for partners?
Armstrong: Yes. We also recently introduced something called
the Certified Network Assessment Partner Program. And this
is directly related to the Skype Operations Framework that
we’ve been talking about. And these programs really help
identify the partners that have trained and certified engineers
on how to use the platform for advanced network
assessments that our tool set enables. As a matter of fact,
many of Microsoft’s top SOF or Skype Operations Framework
partners have achieved the Nectar certification.
Mardini: Okay.
Armstrong: So, partners can either simply resell our licenses
or they can build Nectar into some set of high value
services that they offer to their clients.
Mardini: What would be the next step for a partner looking
to work with you?
Armstrong: Yeah. Our website at nectarcorp.com is certainly
a great place to start, but I would invite anyone interested
in building an offer around Nectar to contact me directly.
My focus at Nectar is really on our overall Microsoft
practice and specifically our strategic alliances in the
Skype for Business marketplace. So, I look forward to
talking to anyone interested.
Mardini: Sounds good. Monitoring and reporting can fulfill
an important customer need. There’s a lot going on in the
background to help maintain a healthy, unified communications
environment. Solutions like Nectar’s UC management
platform can help keep and maintain and optimal Skype for
Business experience. Customers doing due diligence prior to
deployment or migration or customers seeking greater
insight into their communications environment are looking
for solutions like this. Partners can add to their business
offering by partnering with Nectar to help customers implement
these solutions with a focus on providing a great user
experience on Skype for Business.
Tim, thank you for coming in today.
Armstrong: Caleb, thank you for having me. It was great to
be able to spend the time with you.
Mardini: And thank you for watching. Please visit
nectarcorp.com or reach out to Tim about adding these
network assessment solutions to your sales portfolio.