Empirix, a specialist in service quality assurance solutions for new IP communications, today announced the availability of Hammer Edge 2.0, a next-generation test solution that measures the effects of varied network traffic on real-time voice and video quality.
According to Empirix, the release expands the product’s multiservice, security and high-density media capabilities, which significantly reduces the time and cost of testing complex IP communications solutions. For network equipment manufacturers, this benefit translates into higher quality products, shorter engineering cycles and faster time to revenue. For service providers and enterprises, it means gaining the ability to assure customer experience.
Using the Hammer Edge solution, organisations can quickly create and execute test plans that simulate a wide range of realistic user traffic to predict its impact on Quality of Service (QoS). Along with session border controllers, firewalls and security gateways, Hammer Edge 2.0 now verifies ENUM, e-mail, chat and IM servers, as well as solutions featuring Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP) and high-density voice and video media.
“Empirix has been a test partner for many years and an innovator in IP testing for even longer, so they were a perfect choice for demonstrating our NBS product performance to our customers,” said David Tipping, vice president of worldwide systems engineering and marketing for Sonus Networks. “Hammer Edge addresses our high-density media requirements along with a wide range of service and security test scenarios.”
Today, a true assessment of real-time voice and video quality is vital to understanding the customer experience. A recent report from the Customer Experience Foundation found that 68 percent of consumers will hang up if they experience poor voice quality. For those calling about a new product or service, they will likely call a competing company instead. As networks are asked to support more traffic, media, devices and applications to enable todays multiservice solutions, issues with voice quality will only become worse. With Hammer Edge, organisations can quickly identify and fix these problems before they ever reach the end-user, says Empirix.
“With the entrance of new applications and modes of communications, assuring the quality of all new products and services is even more critical to the success of a business,” said Tim Moynihan, vice president of marketing, Enterprise Solutions at Empirix. “Organisations need to verify the effect of multi-modal communication on overall QoS prior to deployment otherwise it will cost them time, customers and money.”