Whaleback launches third major release of CrystalBlue Voice Service 17 September, 2007 By Chris Talbot

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According to David Zwicker, vice president of marketing at Whaleback Systems, the company, which has traditionally targeted businesses with between five and 25 seats, is now looking at larger opportunities. It's looking to move into the 50 to 1,500-seat (or above) market.

"What we're looking to do as a company is go up-market a bit," Zwicker said. That doesn't mean it's abandoning the small business market, he added.

In addition to new technologies designed to cater to larger businesses, Diamond Shoals also builds on Whaleback's Redundant Array of Inexpensive Links (RAIL) capabilities that allow multiple broadband links to be easily combined to form a single high-availability network connection.

"[Diamond Shoals has] been enabled by some new capabilities that give us more scalability, that support more station counts and lots more of what larger companies want to see from a voice provider," Zwicker said.

One key feature in the Diamond Shoals release is the OrcaVision Voice Quality Management System, which provides total visibility into the customer's call path as their voice traffic crosses multiple IP networks. A graphical mapping tool offers customers the ability to analyze call volume, traffic bottlenecks, usage patterns and call histories.

While the launch of RAIL in June is considered as the first phase of the launch of Diamond Shoals, the launch of the OrcaVision Voice Quality Management System is the key element of phase two. According to Zwicker, though, there is still more to the story of Diamond Shoals. The company plans to announce phase three, which will offer even more functionality, sometime this fall.

Another big feature in Diamond Shoals is the courtesy phone options, which Zwicker said enable a company to offer a guest/common area phone for a low cost -- lower than adding a workstation phone.

Also as part of the announcement, Whaleback announced it is now offering three new Polycom IP phones -- the 320 and 330 as low-cost IP phones, and the 550.

"The 550 is an interesting phone because it supports the HD voice standard. Whaleback plans to move into this area over time and increasingly add high-definition voice-over-IP," Zwicker said.