New managed service for Nortel’s IP PBX from Verizon

The new Nortel IP PBX managed service will include the full life cycle of on-premises equipment management, from implementation and deployment through fault, configuration accounting, performance and security management.

The Nortel-based managed service is due in January 2008. It is aimed at large enterprises that prefer managed network services to in-house support.

Laurie Shook, manager of managed IP telephony for Verizon Business, confirms that Nortel is unique in that it has announced a very well-connected integration strategy with Microsoft. There is a lot of industry discussion related to using Microsoft's Office Communicator that launches the Unified Communication applications. Many people have that client on the desktop already.

Verizon Business identifies problems, fixes and troubleshoots the network, configures servers and routers, and manages it, takes care of asset management and then does performance reporting. If there are not immediate but potential problems, they can be identified and proactive action can be taken, instead of a break being reactively fixed.

Verizon then does a security assessment that looks at how those issues affect VOIP.

As a part of the new Nortel IP PBX managed service, Verizon Business will offer 100% platform availability service-level agreements and call completion guarantees, as well as guaranteeing actual voice quality based on a Mean Opinion Score of 4.0.