Whaleback Adds Business Continuity Capabilities to VoIP Offer

Whaleback Systems announced a new release of its managed CrystalBlue Voice Service that includes a number of new business continuity capabilities, such as the availability of multiple broadband circuits, redundant service provider gateway access and automatic telephone number failover.

CrystalBlue customers now can deploy up to three secure voice-only broadband circuits for terminating local and long-distance phone calls, fax messages and related Whaleback voice applications.

Ken Stess, vice president of corporate and business development, said an additional link, which costs $350 per month, could be used to provide extra capacity when needed or a hot standby link in the event of an emergency. “You could have two from the same provder, but I think it’s better to have diverse paths,” he said, noting that customers would likely chose a DSL and a cable modem connection. All billing is handled by Whaleback on a single invoice.

Each circuit is logically associated with the others, allowing customers to load share traffic across multiple connections. Customer phone numbers, meanwhile, are not associated with the circuits but are logically associated with the SMB 1500 IP PBX deployed at the customer site, so that they are functional should anything happen to the connections.

The SMB 1500 also includes Redundant Service Provider Gateway Access, which provides two separate call setup and call tear down paths to the Whaleback backbone network. The SMB 1500 is configured to connect with two separate IP addresses. A single broadband connection provides access to a primary and a secondary Whaleback Network Gateway and calls are dynamically switched from the primary to the secondary gateway if delays are encountered.

In addition, the main number and any DID numbers are automatically rerouted to secondary numbers in the event of a failure caused by lost power, lost broadband connections or a building fire, to name a few examples.

In addition, Whaleback offers backup for voice mail prompts, personalized auto attendant and user voice mail greetings. Stess said this information is backed up every night at the Whaleback NOC. Voice mail message backup also is available and stored for 30 days, he said. The service costs $4.95 for each site per month, he added.

Since its initial release in February 2006, the CrystalBlue Voice Service has supported business continuity features, including nightly backup of the premises database, continuous pinging of deployed SMB 1500 IP PBXs to monitor call-quality down to the handset to ensure pristine bandwidth conditions and 24/7 centralized monitoring.

Whaleback Systems www.WhalebackSystems.com