Nectar And Cisco Bring Self-Healing, Software Defined Networking To Unified Communications

New Collaboration Enables the Industry’s First UC-SDN Solution Purpose-Built to Support Skype for Business and Multi-Vendor UC Environments

Nectar Services Corp., a leader in the development of network monitoring and management software for voice, video, data, and advanced applications for the Unified Communications (UC) industry, announced recently a new collaboration between Nectar and Cisco. By integrating Nectar’s Unified Communications Management Platform (UCMP) with Cisco’s Application Policy Infrastructure Controller Enterprise Module (APIC-EM), the companies are delivering the industry’s first commercially available UC-SDN solution to support multi-vendor unified communications and collaboration across a Cisco network.

UC deployments today rely upon infrastructure management solutions that lack coherency, dynamism, end-to-end service visibility and self-healing. The integrated solution of Cisco’s APIC-EM with Nectar’s UCMP, delivers the first multi-vendor UC-SDN solution purpose-built to work across multi-vendor environments such as Cisco, Microsoft Skype for Business (formerly Microsoft Lync), and Avaya UC platforms, SIP-based solutions and SBCs.

Cisco’s APIC-EM offers a holistic architecture for automation of policy-based application profiles for Cisco network infrastructure. When using a UC platform such as Microsoft Skype for Business in a Cisco network environment, Nectar’s UCMP supported byits recently announced Experience Assurance Module (EAM), will provide advanced monitoring, ‘self-healing’ and security capabilities that will improve a user’s quality of experience and network Quality of Service (QoS). “While self-healing networks are nothing new, bringing this capability to the network’s edge is an advancement that few have achieved,” cited Christine Bakan, senior director of product management for Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions Group, Cisco. Nectar is currently demonstrating its solution at Cisco Live this week, booth number 1134.

As a pioneer in UC-SDN, Microsoft too benefits with greater integration into Cisco network environments. Nectar’s solution enables Skype for Business to seamlessly integrate with Cisco APIC-EM and to deliver new and exciting work flows, dynamic QoS, dynamic mapping of users experience to business requirements and enhanced security to know that Skype for Business traffic is authorized and valid for the network to prioritize. By integrating its unique Microsoft SDN API capabilities with Cisco’s APIC-EM, Nectar’s Experience Assurance Module and QoS Policy Engine capabilities are uniquely able to:

• Automatically configure QoS policy for both the Skype for Business end-points and the network
• Detect calls with poor voice quality and take corrective action in real-time
• Remark verified calls by actively monitoring end-point registrations
• Adjust QoS policy for a specific call based on pre-defined call characteristics

These capabilities result in reduction of TCO, unified policy administration across multi-vendor UC and network elements, wholesale improvement of the UC user experience, and dynamic delivery of superior experience to mobile UC users in real-time.

Nectar’s solution combined with Cisco’s APIC-EM controller and the Microsoft SDN API allows IT organizations to quickly recognize UC deployment and SDN benefits across their global IT infrastructure. Nectar was the first fully qualified UC Monitoring and Diagnostics solution and Depth Partner for the Microsoft SDN API program and was recently unveiled by Microsoft as one of only three certified IT Pro Tools Partners for Skype for Business. “Ensuring a superior user experience with Skype for Business is a top priority for us. The Nectar solution with Cisco’s SDN controller helps remove some of the network security and QoS related barriers, thereby easing adoption, deployment, monitoring and management for Skype for Business in multi-vendor network infrastructure environments,” said Pascal Menezes, principal program manager for Microsoft Skype for Business.

No other UC monitoring solution on the market today has the ability to see call problems as they are happening and automatically respond to and resolve issues that affect call quality and the user experience. “Nectar is uniquely positioned to become the de-facto multi-vendor UC focused Monitoring and Diagnostics tool that is truly network aware. Our broad and deep knowledge of every UC session, its quality, and correlated session level diagnostics creates the core awareness needed for a real-time UC-SDN solution,” stated Joe Fuccillo, Nectar CTO. ”Our ability to combine Cisco’s APIC-EM API features with our UCMP platform, puts real-time, QoS self-healing power for Cisco networks in the hands of service providers and enterprise customers alike,” continued Mr. Fuccillo.

About Nectar
Nectar, a global market leader in providing the most comprehensive monitoring and diagnostics software solution for Unified Communication services enables IT and operation organizations to proactively ensure the end-user experience. Our flagship offering, the Unified Communications Management Platform (UCMP) improves visibility and service delivery across integrated voice, video and data application solutions by providing unique and critical performance information. Nectar provides monitoring and diagnostics for millions of enterprise endpoints to over 1,100 enterprises in over 86 countries—including some of the largest global banking, search engine, service provider,healthcare, and manufacturing organizations in the world.