Empirix introduced a conference bridge monitoring application that ensures top voice performance and bridge reliability by duplicating customers' experiences during conference calls then using them as the key measurement of quality.

The Conference Bridge Monitoring Solution's voice-based conference quality management model is a significant departure from conventional conference bridge monitoring. Where standard tools monitor network data feeds for packet loss, jitter, etc., the Empirix solution approaches monitoring from the user's perspective. It tests exactly what the user is hearing during conference calls by evaluating voice clips as they play through conference bridges.

"Ensuring trouble-free conferences requires a level of visibility that conventional monitoring solutions can't provide," said Empirix CEO John D'Anna. "Do the access numbers work? Are conferences bleeding together? Do callers drop off? Packet flows don't provide that kind of insight, which is why we designed a new monitoring method that uses the customer experience as the baseline. Companies conduct billions of dollars of business over conference bridges. Our Conference Bridge Monitoring Solution provides the quality and reliability assurances they expect for such an important business tool."

The Conference Bridge Monitoring Solution verifies conference server availability, performance, uptime and participants' voice quality. It performs three essential quality and reliability management functions that enable conference bridge service providers to create consistently positive customer experiences. They are:

- Alarming and notification for bridge application and voice quality issues during conference calls;

- Real-time reporting for critical Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that provide business intelligence; and

- Decreased mean time to recognize problems and ensuring that collaboration tools are performing as expected.

The heart of the Conference Bridge Monitoring Solution's capabilities is its voice-based testing model. The solution automatically sets up conference bridges of up to eight participants, dials into the conference, and plays audio clips. The solution captures the audio on the other side of the bridge and evaluates it for degradation using the industry-standard PESQ (Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality) algorithm. Dashboard alarms alert network management staff to irregularities with a KPI that may signal a quality problem.

The Conference Bridge Monitoring Solution provides out-of-the-box functionality for monitoring the most important conference call KPIs with minimal customization. The KPIs include:

- Call pass\fail and length;

- Hung call metrics;

- Time-to-connect to conference;

- Interactive voice response menu and system response times; and

- Participant voice latency and delay.

The solution provides network operations staff with active, real-time performance alerts and passive monitoring of network data. This combination enables staff to respond to performance issues immediately and remediate their root causes. Using data collected through network probes, the Conference Bridge Monitoring Solution provides a logical drill down that helps network operators pinpoint if a specific phone number, carrier, location, or conference bridge server is having a problem.

The Conference Bridge Monitoring Solution can work as a stand-alone solution or integrate with existing network management infrastructures. It is available immediately.