NetIQ's VoIP Management Products

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1 Products, D. Neil Research Note 10 September 2002 NetIQ's VoIP Management Products NetIQ has announced its Voice over IP management strategy and has a number of pre- and post-implementation products available. VoIP and IP telephony solutions can be improved by using NetIQ's products. Core Topic Enterprise Networking: Voice Applications Key Issue How and when should enterprises move to IP telephony systems? Voice over IP (VoIP) is typical of many new technologies the product technology arrives without the support systems to manage it efficiently and effectively. Usually these management systems lag the technology by 12 to 24 months. We have been seeing this lag for many years with data networking, and we are again seeing it with VoIP and IP telephony. VoIP will usually share much, if not all, of the current data network infrastructure, including the LAN and the corporate intranet. Pre-implementation assessment and planning is crucial to ensuring that the IP network infrastructure is capable of supporting voice a mission-critical application to the required high levels of performance. Many enterprises do not perform this activity prior to implementing VoIP and IP telephony. This is often disastrous, resulting in a poor-quality voice system that can cost the enterprise lost business and revenue. Often IP telephony rather than a lack of pre-implementation assessment is blamed, and fixing the problem after the fact can be costly. Pre-implementation services are available from leading IP telephony equipment providers; however, the list of currently available products that can help enterprises through the process of pre-implementation and operational management of VoIP is limited. One company, NetIQ, is heading in the right direction, and if it can execute, is likely to be one of the leading VoIP management vendors. Product Strategy: NetIQ's overall strategy is to provide a series of products that can be used from pre-implementation through production for VoIP transport and IP telephony. This strategy is illustrated in Figure 1. Gartner Entire contents 2002 Gartner, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction of this publication in any form without prior written permission is forbidden. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. Gartner shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof. The reader assumes sole responsibility for the selection of these materials to achieve its intended results. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice.

2 Figure 1 VoIP Product Strategy Assess Test Monitor Diagnose Analyze Secure Assess network readiness for VoIP Legend Source: NetIQ Test networks and equipment Available now Available late 2002 Availability not announced Real-time monitoring of quality and performance Pinpoint call quality and call setup problems Usage reporting and analysis Real-time security monitoring and vulnerability analysis The strategy includes six areas of functionality. The first two areas, assess and test, are meant for VoIP pilot and predeployment activities. The target market for these two areas is system integrators (SIs) and other professional services companies, to be used when working with their clients that are preparing to install VoIP. They could be of value for large enterprises as well. The other four areas, monitor, diagnose, analyze and secure, are primarily aimed at the enterprise market, but again, SIs can use them. Strengths: The biggest strength of this product line is that it has a holistic view of the management of the VoIP environment, making it unique among available products. The VoIP Assessor examines the current network environment and produces a score indicating how capable the network is of handling VoIP. Software is installed at a central location and at various network end-point PCs to emulate VoIP traffic. The assessment score is based on the mean opinion score, which is based on International Telecommunications Union recommendation G.107, and presents a rating on the quality of the voice system. VoIP Assessor identifies potential network bottlenecks and examines various attributes of the network, such as jitter, packet loss or latency. The next release of VoIP Assessor starts beta testing in September It expands the assessments by examining the network to collect information about routers, switches and circuits, including information about the hardware and the version of the software. It also contains a capacity-planning component, which will assess how well the links and IP telephony systems will handle the VoIP traffic loads. Custom reports can be generated by the user from the SQL database that VoIP Assessor produces. VoIP Assessor will be extended to perform a similar function for video-quality assessments. 10 September

3 The VoIP Test Module is similar to the VoIP Assessor in that it evaluates the IP network's ability to run VoIP. It does this through emulation of the VoIP traffic and provides information on optional network design for VoIP and information on quality of service tuning. A prerequisite for the VoIP Test Module is the NetIQ Chariot performance-monitoring product. VoIP Manager is a suite of modules for real-time monitoring of the VoIP network, including the IP telephony portions. The suite includes modules for monitoring Cisco Systems IP telephony elements, including CallManager, the Cisco Unity unified messaging solution and Cisco's Personal Assistant. It also monitors H.323 call setup and end-to-end call quality. The IP telephony operating system and hardware is essentially a server that needs to be monitored to ensure that it is not running out of CPU power, RAM, disk space and so on. Through its knowledge scripts, VoIP Manager can automatically respond to problems, thereby improving availability and performance. It will coexist with CiscoWorks' VoIP Health Monitor application suite and can interface with Hewlett-Packard's OpenView and Micromuse Netcool. The VoIP Diagnostics tool is planned for general availability in 4Q02. It is a troubleshooting tool to pinpoint the source of callquality problems. It can be used with the VoIP Assessor or the VoIP Manager. Future versions of this product are planned to include diagnostics on call setup and video problems. VoIP monitoring products are still sparse. NetIQ competitors in this market include Agilent Technologies, NetScout Systems, NAI Labs and others. None has a complete life cycle strategy, although they do offer point solutions. NetIQ's products are built on its mature, proven AppManager product. This should improve the reliability and functionality of NetIQ's VoIP products, and it gives NetIQ an advantage over most of its competitors. Challenges: NetIQ is focusing on developing products to support the Cisco CallManager IP telephony products. Although integration with other vendors' IP telephony products is planned, availability dates have not been announced. It is likely that priority will be given to developing versions to support Nortel Networks, Avaya and Siemens IP telephony systems. The strategy of initially supporting only Cisco IP telephony products is reasonable; the company cannot develop all products overnight. However, users of other IP telephony systems will have limited management alternatives for the foreseeable future. 10 September

4 VoIP Assessor is aimed at SIs and other professional services firms for pre-installation use. Pricing is based on the number of concurrent phone calls that the user needs to simulate. The current pricing is $14,000 for an environment with 25 or fewer IP phones, $17,000 for 26 to 250 IP phones and $20,000 for up to 2,500 IP phones. The pricing is relatively inexpensive for an SI, as VoIP Assessor can be used many times. However, for all but the largest VoIP installations, the price is prohibitive. This is unfortunate, as a pre-implementation assessment of the VoIP capability of the network is highly desirable, if not mandatory. NetIQ offers a one-month license for $4,000, but even that can be prohibitive for small installations. As mentioned, the current version of VoIP Manager supports only Cisco's IP telephony solution. NetIQ should develop versions of VoIP Manager for Avaya and Nortel IP telephony systems as soon as possible. Developing a version for 3COM systems would be useful, but should be a lower priority. Most of 3COM's systems are small, often with fewer than 100 telephones. That type of user typically does not consider implementing network management tools. One challenge with any monitoring application of this nature is the interrogation of proprietary applications or proprietary protocols. The developer of the monitoring application is dependent on technical information from the IP telephony system vendor, which may not be provided. NetIQ has to develop good relationships with IP telephony system vendors to ensure that it is aware of any changes to their systems. This way, NetIQ will be able to modify its application to support these changes as they become available. Establishing these relationships can be problematic. To be successful with this product, NetIQ faces some significant challenges getting market "mind share." Many enterprises do not see the need for pre-assessment a position with which Gartner strongly disagrees. Additionally, many enterprises will not see the need for network management products, and those that do will likely only use the equipment manufacturer's standard toolset. Typically, manufacturers' toolsets are not as function-rich as independent network management system products and will often lag user requirements by a considerable amount of time. Like many vendors, NetIQ is using channels to sell these products. Getting the channels' mind share, interest and understanding of the value of these products will be challenging, as will achieving more than niche status with these products. Consider This Product When: Considering the implementation of an IP telephony system 10 September

5 A Cisco IP telephony system is already installed Consider Alternatives When: The enterprise has non-cisco IP telephony systems installed NetIQ Headquarters: San Jose, California Web Location: Founded: 1995 Ownership: Public Employees: 1,200 worldwide Financial Data: FY02 revenue was $278.2 million, compared with $166.9 million for FY01, an increase of 67 percent Bottom Line: NetIQ's VoIP management product strategy is good. There are competitive products from other vendors, although they tend to be point solutions, rather than part of a complete strategy. NetIQ has developed a reputation for building reliable products, and the VoIP management products are built on other, proven NetIQ products. However, enterprises must remember that these products are new, and there will inevitably be problems and shortcomings. Enterprises (and SIs using these products) should ensure contractually that they have adequate levels of support and have access to recompense, if necessary. 10 September