Looking for Feedback on some cool IP Office Tools

[fonedoc]

[ol]
[li]The availability of a nightly backup of your configurations can prove to be invaluable.[/li]
[li]Given enough time, technicians and system admins database corruption or destruction is almost guaranteed.[/li]
[/ol]

There are many other things that we have learned but I think that these two are at the forefront of my daily life. To combat this, my team and I developed a completely automated backup system for the IP Office units and have deployed this to the majority of our customers. It is a program which allows all of the IP Office systems on your WAN to be discovered, backed up and monitored remotely without any human intervention or manipulation. We copy these files automatically to 4 different off site storage areas and can provide our customers with a secure login only to their particular configurations in the event of a catastrophic failure. We offer two additional options with this service.
[ol A]
[li]The customer can receive a confirmation email each morning letting them know that their files were backed up successfully.[/li]
[li]The customer can receive a confirmation email with the configuration files attached to it.[/li]
[/ol]

The reason for this post is to get some feedback from our peers here at Tek-Tips to determine if you think something like this would be marketable to the IP Office community. We are considering moving outside the boundaries of our customer base and offering this as a service to any IP Office customer anywhere. What are your thoughts about this?

We are also developing another tool which I have been working on for a while now. Because we have the nightly backups on file for the majority of our customers we occasionally have to restore a backup that is several weeks or months old due to the current configuration being corrupted. What has always been a pain is doing the "stare and compare" to determine what is different in the two configurations. We are in the final stages of developing an automated tool that will provide you the following information:

[ol]
[li]A Differential Report detailing all of the Additions to the configuration file.[/li]
[li]A Differential Report detailing all of the Deletions to the configuration file.[/li]
[li]A Differential Report detailing all of the Areas that were Changed in the configuration file.[/li]
[li]A Detailed Report of programming entries that could cause an issue with the IP Office system.[/li]
[/ol]

We have considered giving the customer the option of creating the new configuration file for them making all of the necessary changes so that all they would have to do is upload the configuration to their switch for completion.

We have the ability to turn these comparisons around very quickly (usually within an hour or two depending on the size of the configuration).

My question to the group is do you feel that such a service as this would be useful?

We are not attempting to promote or sell anything here but rather we value the feed back of the group.

If you feel like programs like this are worth their "salt", what type of fees would you see as appropriate for such a set of tools?

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

Fonedoc

 

[dlwnd]

As a phone vendor, this could be value added on a support contract. The file diff would be very useful as often times we discover the client has attempted to do something that did not work out. So, if you diff the last backup to the file you might find to be corrupt, that is where the value comes in. A technician can assess in a timely fashion. Where can i download these tools at?

 

[Ragnorak]

I think the file diff would be an awesome troubleshooting tool.

The backup would be quite useful to anyone with a lot of IPO's under a maintenance contract.

If the two were combined so that you could get an ongoing report of all programming MAC work that was done for all your customers, I think that would be useful in more ways than I can count.

It is something sales people could bring up to distingish their company from other vendors and is particularly appealing to any company that actually knows why they need a disaster prevention and recovery plan.

You could sell it as a software package or you could sell it as a service (per IPO per month type fee structure) to companies that don't want to set up a server and maintain off site backup locations themselves (or offer both.) Smaller vendors would probably be more interested in the second option and larger ones would probably like the first.

Bottom line is, yes, I think there is a market for your tool.

I admire your entrepreneurial spirit.

 

[cjinsocal581]

I have built a few of these tools. I will provide a link for you later.

cheers,
CJ

 

[fonedoc]

Thanks all for your input. The tools are not completely out of beta testing yet. If any of you have a site where you need to see a differental report, you can email me the two files that you want compared. I'll be happy to do a few of these for you so that you can see what the results look like. I have set up a special email address for this and keep in mind that I don't check this email address every hour of every day. I will check it periodically though and get the results back to you. You can email the configuration files to bstewart at avayavoipguru dot com.


cjinsocal581, I would be interested in looking at some of your work also. I am just trying to make the process of supporting the IP Office platform a little better.

Thanks

Fonedoc

 

[RafaB]

Great Idea !

As a sales / tech person this would prove invaluable to both our company from a support perspective but also to our customers. This would be something which I could talk enthusiastically about when selling service.

It's difficult to put a market rate on a product which is not currently there. When we have looked at this sort of thing before for very different call centre apps we have been able to sell for the price to our customer of a days down time. For example if the call centre generated £5k profit on orders in a day, we would charge them £5k to have them up and running within a guaranteed fix period. As with any sale process start off with what you would like to get, add some and know where your stop point is.

If you are UK based (who buy through distribution) then speak to your distributor and try and include the Product Manager and a technical rep from their side. These guys know the market and understand mass pricing models. Or, speak with Avaya and ask them about becoming a development partner with them. Often manufacturers know they need something but don't know how to achieve it and hope their customers / partners / affiliates will offer something to them.

Whatever happens make sure it works as people WILL be able to sell this on the 'safe' factor, if it has glitches there will be headaches later.

As a guess in terms of pricing ?

I think you should easily be able to get away with £500 / annum for the Central site and a couple of hundred per additional site. Remember that if you go to Avaya / Disty's then whatever figure you take to them will be slashed once the many tiers have taken their piece of the pie.

Good luck, it's a great idea that should catch on, keep us posted on your progress!