Cytracom Focuses On Partner Needs With Launch Of VoIP Intelligence Monitoring

With the launch of its Integrated Voice Intelligence Engine [IVIE], Cytracom is counting on its MSP partners to help remove some of the VoIP market's biggest stumbling blocks, and it's ramping up its channel operation to support it.

IVIE is an analytics layer within Cytracom's platform, and it includes two modules: One that helps ensure voice continuity and one for "active intelligence monitoring," which allows partners to intervene before customers realize there might be a problem.

Eric Pinto, Cytracom channel vice president, said the company's channel team now has seven people and its development team has doubled as the company has worked to develop the APIs necessary to integrate its analytics capabilities with the platforms its customers are using.

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"We're focused on what are partners need," Pinto said. "What are they not capable of doing? We're building out the tools they need so they can present the product and have more difficult conversations with customers about what they need rather than just about the sale."

Allen, Texas-based Cytracom has about 1,300 partners today, and Pinto said he's rather have "happy, active, engaged partners that are happy to work with us" than just more partners.

"They're moving forward in the market while others are standing still," said Jason Penka, founder and CEO of Tech Junkies, a Hays, Kan., solution provider that works with Cytracom. Other VoIP vendors "solve business continuity by placing expensive hardware on-site or relying on manually created tickets to change call routes," he said. "[Cytracom] identified that as a major concern and stepped up to solve the problem for its partners and our clients."

Cytracom's intelligence platform helps break the cycle of finger-pointing that takes place when VoIP systems are having difficulties, said Eric Pinto, Cytracom's channel vice president.

Cytracom's intelligence monitoring, for example, sends out alerts when call quality drops below a certain threshold, in the moment, allowing MSPs to get to work before it ever becomes a problem for the customer.

"Typically, an individual user will experience some choppiness in calls, but it won't be until a day, or a week later that he has a conversation with the guy next to him, and guess what? Call quality has been bad for both of them," Pinto said. "By the time they call the MSP, it's been a couple of days or a couple of weeks. Providing the data analytics that will give [MSPs] day-by-day or hour-by-hour visibility and do some predictive analysis with it. They can see patterns. We can be a real partner to them rather than just saying I don't know, must be your network."

"Having this done automatically means there is virtually zero call loss during an without a physical person making any changes," Penka said. "Then, as the service is restored, the calls routes are restored without our intervention. We're able to detect call quality issues possibly before the client even notices a problem. We can proactively solve issues instead of getting urgent calls where we have to pull a technician off of another project. So just out of the gate, we are saving time, which equates to money."