As a market-leading service management platform, Virsae’s VSM has already begun to generate interest around the globe. In fact, it’s had a significant impact on the UK market, where UC service provider organisations are using it to simplify their management strategies.
Intended to deliver more predictable managed services to companies in the unified communication industry, VSM delivers business oriented service management data through a single-pane-of-glass. In an attempt to learn more about the possibilities that the technology could bring to the market, I spoke to Tom Gutteridge, the product marketing manager at Maintel, one of the companies advocating for VSM.
My conversation with Tom Gutteridge provided a unique insight into why more businesses are looking for UC management strategies, and what makes Virsae VSM such a popular choice.
What Attracted You to Virsae VSM?
As business communications provider that offers top-of-the-line technology and fully-managed services, Maintel serves thousands of clients in across the UK and Europe. According to Gutteridge, Maintel was first introduced to Virsae after they completed their acquisition of Azzurri Communications in 2016. Since then, they’ve been using the VSM platform to help improve customer experience and business performance.
“I think one of the things that first drew us to VSM was the fact that it was designed using the ITIL framework. That’s pretty unique when it comes to a monitoring and management tool in the communications space, and it really caught our attention.”
Although many people once considered IT and Communications to be entirely separate industries, the evolving nature of the market, along with the onset of digital transformation (DX) has pushed both sectors together. “Finding a solution that had been specifically structured and delivered around the ITIL framework we were already using was incredibly reassuring for us.”
Additionally, Gutteridge noted that in terms of operational efficiency, Maintel felt that VSM was a great platform from the very start.
“The fact that it can mine a huge amount of data from the Avaya platforms was hugely advantageous to us, particularly since we are an Avaya Diamond partner and manage some of the most complex estates.”
How Do You Think VSM Benefits Your Business?
As a powerful new platform for the company, VSM has been able to unlock several doors for Maintel. Gutteridge told me that thanks to its unique structure, the platform can effectively and efficiently mine date in near real-time. “It also delivers analytics that extends back anytime between three and thirteen months. Combining that with real-time reporting means that we have a fantastic tool that provides actionable insight for our technicians and analysts.”
What’s more, because VSM can pull a huge amount of data from the Avaya platform, Maintel can provide a great deal of analytical information to operational managers. This means that they can learn more about how Avaya technology is performing from an operational perspective.
“We can look at the utilisation of UC resources over a specific period and determine whether our clients might be short on resources. Since the system naturally complies with ITIL, it’s much easier for us to harness that data and explain it to our customers.”
Maintel can even monitor license usage in real-time and figure out whether their customer could potentially benefit from reducing their license so that they can avoid paying for unnecessary subscriptions. It also allows them to sit alongside clients when forecasting for specific business initiatives.
“We can support our customers by letting them know how much traffic they can generate from a marketing campaign without over-burdening the system.”
How Do You Think the Platform Will Help You to Grow?
With VSM, Maintel can be far more proactive when it comes to understanding what’s going on in their customers’ networks. This means that they can help each client plan for the future, without having to wait for that customer to make the first move.
“For the team at Maintel, having this level of automation running in the background means that we can constantly keep our focus on giving our customers the answers they need about their business.”
“We can help them to understand everything from license utilisation to trunk capacity, to routing tables and also whether things might not be working exactly as they should. Having this engine in the background also saves us a lot of time, while cutting down on the risk of human error.”
Beyond being a useful diagnostic tool that naturally compliments the ITIL framework, the VSM platform also helps Maintel to assist in automated network discovery. In other words, if they’re taking over a network, the system will tell them everything they need to gain control of that system quickly, without the need for costly manual audits.
“We think that the amount of data the platform mines plays a significant role in differentiating our company. It means that we can demonstrate the possibilities of our services to our prospects, and this fast access to information helps to build confidence in our clients, by reassuring them that we have the best possible tools available in the market.”
There is no substitute for the investment in people and skills that Maintel makes but with a service automation platform with the power of VSM in the background those people can concentrate on applying those skills to value adding actionable insight rather than lengthy data crunching.
VSM gives Maintel a great deal more to offer as a managed service provider.
