Thinking about shifting your IMS core to AWS, but worried about losing control over voice quality? You’re not alone. Lots of folks share that same concern. Transitioning your infrastructure to the AWS cloud offers many advantages, from enhanced redundancy and speed to unparalleled flexibility and cost efficiencies. However, it also introduces the challenge of losing direct oversight and insight into the intricate workings of your network. But fear not, for there’s a silver lining. With the right tools (we’ll get to them a bit later in the article) you don’t need to sacrifice visibility into your voice performance. When you’re armed with essential data and peace of mind, you can confidently monitor and uphold the integrity of your voice network.
Moving IMS Core to AWS: Considerations
Modernizing customer interactions with cloud-based voice infrastructure is a growing trend. Businesses are ditching outdated systems and embracing the power of Amazon Web Services (AWS) to unlock a range of features that elevate the customer experience.
While migrating voice services to the cloud offers flexibility and unlocks new use cases, it can present a trade-off between this flexibility and service visibility. Businesses need a clear view of their network’s inner workings to effectively troubleshoot issues and optimize the user experience. These needs call for tools that can help organizations leverage the cloud’s benefits while maintaining complete visibility across the entire network and cloud infrastructure.
With this clear understanding in mind, let’s explore the potential benefits and challenges of migrating to the cloud:
Benefits:
- One of the primary benefits is the rapid deployment speed on AWS, allowing you to quickly provision and launch new services, giving you a competitive edge.
- AWS’s exceptional flexibility lets you adjust resources up or down based on demand, ensuring efficient resource use and cost-effectiveness.
- The platform’s built-in redundancy and high availability provide strong failover mechanisms, ensuring continuous business operations and reducing downtime.
- With AWS’s extensive global network, you can expand your reach and serve customers in various regions with minimal infrastructure investment.
- Scalability is another major advantage, as AWS enables you to easily scale your IMS core to handle increasing traffic and user bases, securing your business’s future.
- Moreover, AWS offers carrier-grade performance and reliability without the need for complex and expensive on-premises infrastructure.
Overall, migrating your IMS core to AWS leads to significant time and cost savings, allowing you to concentrate on your core business objectives and deliver exceptional customer experiences. However, this doesn’t come without challenges (which we’ll explore next) so you can develop a plan to address them and ensure a smooth transition.
Challenges:
- One of the primary concerns is the potential lack of visibility into the cloud environment, as traditional network monitoring tools may not seamlessly extend their capabilities to the cloud. This can leave organizations with blind spots, hindering their ability to effectively monitor and troubleshoot issues within the IMS core infrastructure.
- Additionally, the cloud introduces additional layers of network complexity, with various components and services interacting in intricate ways, e.g. when operating services that span on-premise networks and the cloud. This increased complexity can make it challenging to predict and understand how these interconnected elements may impact service quality and performance, potentially leading to unforeseen issues.
- Furthermore, the cloud can sometimes be perceived as a “black box,” where the underlying infrastructure and processes are opaque, making it difficult to gain insights into what is happening behind the scenes. This lack of transparency can hinder an organization’s ability to proactively identify and address potential problems, potentially leading to reactive and inefficient issue resolution.
Crucial When Migrating to the Cloud: A Whole New View on Customer Experience
Gaining an in-depth view into the performance of real-time media streams is crucial for understanding and enhancing customer experience. You really need to have this invaluable visibility by peering into the black box of SIP signaling and RTP media flows. Through call searches, you can access comprehensive call details spanning signaling information, transport quality indicators, and granular RTP stream analysis from multiple monitoring points.
Let’s take a look at a specific example, to make the discussion more practical:
This diagram provides a glimpse into the mechanics of a call, showcasing both signaling and media performance. At first glance, the CDR data suggests a successful call. However, seemingly “perfect” calls often go unnoticed unless there’s a complaint.
Now, let’s add the crucial layer of media performance data. We can now see both directions of the call measured at multiple points in the network. Here’s the issue: the A to B direction shows problems, while the B to A direction appears flawless. If the A-party in this example were an inbound call center, it would hardly understand the customer. Hello?! Can you please repeat that?
The media data paints a clear picture: the call experience for the end customer (B) was terrible, despite appearing successful from the call center’s perspective (A) and from the signaling. This highlights the critical role media data plays in understanding true service performance.
In one instance, we investigated one-way audio issues for a customer. They requested their enterprise customer to record occurrences. The root cause was quickly identified, which allowed us to search for all one-way audio calls. Surprisingly, out of 320 one-way audio calls only eight were reported. This 1/40 ratio showcases the limited visibility relying solely on customer complaints. Proactive, real-time insights are crucial for identifying and resolving issues before they impact customer satisfaction.
Knowing there’s an issue is just the tip of the iceberg. The real challenge lies in efficient troubleshooting. Traditionally, after a customer complaint, the troubleshooting process involves tools like Wireshark. This can be time-consuming for engineers, who have to spend hours sifting through data to pinpoint the problem. Again. Let’s look at a practical example:
After extensive investigation, engineers might discover a network buffering event. Now, imagine if you had “smart indicators” that could automate this entire process. These intelligent indicators would analyze RTP traffic in real-time, performing pattern recognition to identify critical jitter caused by network overload.
With these actionable insights at your fingertips, you can quickly pinpoint the overloaded network element and take immediate steps to address it. This eliminates wasted time spent on manual investigation and allows for faster resolution.
Beyond focusing on network transport, ensuring adherence to standards is equally important. Inconsistencies with established protocols can lead to problems with end-user devices. Therefore, access to information like call policies and RTP header details remains essential for comprehensive troubleshooting.
How Does This All Fit Into the AWS Cloud?
Imagine diving deeper into your real-time communication services, uncovering insights that traditional monitoring tools miss. Qrystal for AWS empowers you to do just that.
This innovative solution utilizes a cutting-edge technique called time-slicing, inspired by industry standards. Time-slicing allows Qrystal to capture call quality data with exceptional detail, revealing subtle variations that might otherwise go unnoticed.
Armed with this granular data, you can generate powerful media Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that directly reflect the call experience for your end users. This shift from generic metrics to user-centric insights empowers you to make data-driven decisions that optimize call quality and ensure exceptional customer satisfaction.
Beyond groundbreaking analysis, Qrystal for AWS is a comprehensive passive mid-point monitoring solution designed specifically for SIP/RTP-based communication services. Its architecture leverages distributed Qrystal Probes for data collection and a central Qrystal Manager for centralized analysis and reporting.
The probes analyze every SIP, RTP, and RTCP packet traversing a monitored link. This comprehensive analysis generates unique metrics that flow directly to the central Qrystal Manager for further processing and insightful reporting. Qrystal Probes excel at deciphering call-related SIP signaling. They efficiently summarize this information into comprehensive reports called xDRs. Additionally, SIP messages are stored on the probe itself, allowing for visualization within call flow diagrams.
Voipfuture’s innovative time slicing technology empowers the probes to create Quality Data Records (QDRs). These records are packed with highly condensed statistical information, offering a detailed snapshot of every five-second segment within an RTP stream. Each QDR boasts hundreds of valuable metrics, ratios, KPIs, and even automated root cause indicators, providing a comprehensive picture of call health.
For situations demanding a closer look, the probes offer smart packet recording functionality. This allows you to capture traces of specific calls or trunks, facilitating in-depth analysis and troubleshooting efforts.
Qrystal Manager is the brain behind the entire system. It gathers all the metric data meticulously captured by the Qrystal Probes throughout the infrastructure. Once the data arrives, Qrystal Manager performs careful and precise post-processing, correlating and aggregating the information for deeper insights. This refined data fuels the creation of valuable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), quality-enriched Call Detail Records (CDRs), and a wealth of other valuable insights.
This comprehensive data is then securely stored within Qrystal Manager’s built-in carrier-grade data warehouse. This central repository ensures easy access and empowers further analysis at any time. But Qrystal Manager goes beyond data collection. It boasts a robust suite of analytics and troubleshooting capabilities. This empowers you to effectively monitor your voice services, identify and address potential issues through fault alarming, and ultimately optimize call quality.
Furthermore, Qrystal Manager offers various interfaces for seamless integration with your existing OSS/BSS applications. This allows for a unified view of your network health and simplifies overall management.
Bottom Line – What’s in It for You?
Picture this: No more frustrated customers complaining about dropped calls. You have the power to ensure crystal-clear voice quality for your users, every time.
Here are some of the benefits you can expect:
- Faster time to resolution: Quickly identify and fix call quality issues with automatic root cause analysis, reducing troubleshooting time by up to 80%.
- Data-driven decisions: Gain actionable insights on your voice service performance, e.g. with reliable, 24/7 call drop ratios.
- Competitive advantage: Impress potential customers with genuine user experience benchmarks that showcase your commitment to quality.
- Effortless cloud migration: Enjoy the flexibility and efficiency of the cloud while maintaining complete control over your voice services with Qrystal for AWS.
- Reduced costs: Benefit from a simple, flexible licensing model and a significantly lower total cost of ownership compared to on-premise solutions.
Qrystal Cloud empowers you to deliver an exceptional voice experience – the kind that keeps your customers happy and coming back for more.
