CounterPath Paves the Way for IT Managers to Take Advantage of Mobile VoIP with BYOD-Focused Solution

With the eruption of smartphones and tablets in the enterprise, IT managers are scrambling as to how to manage not only all the devices that are now touching their networks, but the mobile VoIP software applications that are being used over it. The impacts are widespread, with security and support for device management being the most prominent. In response to the mobile device and application management challenges of BYOD, CounterPath recommends its Bria softphone combined with the company’s cloud-hosted Client Configuration Server (CCS) as a cost effective and efficient means for IT managers to distribute and manage the Bria softphone applications across multiple devices.

Client Configuration Server (CCS)

CCS Deployment

CCS is a carrier-grade platform specifically designed for service providers (SPs) and enterprises that have or intend to deploy Bria softphone endpoints. SPs and enterprises can deploy CCS on-premise or as a fully hosted service from CounterPath. The hosted solution permits enterprises to extend their employee communications to their mobile devices with no additional CapEx to implement and provision beyond purchasing the mobile softphone applications. SPs, on the other hand, can enter the Mobile Device Management (MDM) business and deploy Bria softphone endpoints with ease and efficiency and without CapEx investment in hardware, space, power or bandwidth.

For SPs the hosted CCS offers multi-tenanted capabilities to CounterPath customers with the ability to create sub-groups and assign administrators. Sub-groups can be created for production users, quality assurance or IT departments, and various test groups that might be needed, and can also be used for resellers or corporate customers. Different administrators can also be created for each group, or across various groups within a customer's hosted CCS.

Each administrator for hosted CCS has both web-based access and API access to the CCS for machine-to-machine operations. This enables staff to use the web interface to set up the structure of the profiles and templates, while a customer’s provisioning and other systems can use the API to add, modify, and delete users as they are provisioned in the operator or enterprise’s own systems. Bria softphone clients check in with the hosted infrastructure to receive their initial configuration and updates, as well as receive notifications of any available upgrades.

CounterPath’s Bria SIP clients enable users to make video calls, send messages, manage their presence and collaborate with colleagues all from within an enterprise-rich feature softphone application including: LDAP/Active Directory Integration, CLI (Command Line Interface) and CRM integration, call recording, auto-answer and do-not-disturb. CounterPath’s standards-based Bria app sits on wired or mobile platforms, giving the IT manager flexibility in where they deploy it and across the devices they choose to support. Softphone clients have been constructed to meet standard security protocols such as signaling and media encryption via TLS and SRTP, and successfully tested and certified across multiple vendor platforms. Clients are available for Windows, Mac and Linux desktop OSs, as well as iOS and Android smartphones and tablets.

CCS Features include:

Geographic Redundancy: CCS supports manual configuration of geographic redundancy in addition to the normal CCS installer process.

Ongoing Configuration Management: Provides an update service that allows softphone clients to check for configuration changes and updates upon startup and/or based upon an internal timer mechanism.

Ongoing Version Management: Version control and management services are provided by CCS that enables operators to roll out new softphone versions to their existing users on an optional or mandatory upgrade basis.

Device Tracking and Management: Administrators can set limits for maximum number of devices per user based on profile and/or user level attributes as well as track mobile and desktop device usage by user.

Security Settings: Client communications are facilitated via HTTPS so that softphone client configuration files are secure as they are transferred between the CCS and the client.

License Management: Operators and IT managers can build pools of license keys which can be drawn upon as part of the end user provisioning process. Support for individual and group licenses is provided.

End User Notifications: Operators can generate fully customizable HTML-supported emails to their end users with specific client login information through the CCS web interface.

Dynamic Configuration File Generation: Client provisioning files are generated on demand to ensure realtime content accuracy in the configuration database.

Analytics & Reports: Analytics and reporting to customers to review their subscriber base with respect to the scope of softphone configuration and usage.

User List Download and Upload Capability: Administrators can make bulk moves, adds or changes using a CSV file containing data for all of their users and the attributes set on a user level. They can also download CSV files for archive or editing purposes.

What This Means to You

To Customers: What makes the idea of mobile UC-enablement via the Bria softphone that much more appealing to IT managers is the availability of CounterPath’s cloud-hosted CCS service which enables them to deploy and manage the Bria applications quickly and cost effectively across multiple devices.

Other elements of the cloud-hosted CCS value prop include:

• No Investment – CounterPath manages the purchasing, setup and hosting of all of the hardware, space, power and bandwidth.
  
  
• Enterprise-Grade Reliability – With five 9’s (99.999%) reliability, CounterPath ensures the hosted CCS is highly available and manages all platform monitoring.
  
  
• Accelerated Deployments – Customers can implement and deploy the hosted CCS within days while utilizing CounterPath for the initial set-up of the system.

There is one caution here. The Bria softphone/CCS solution does not contain a complete set of MDM features or functionality. It does have elements of such a solution, but several things are missing such as the ability to:

• Reduce operational costs by enabling a self-service portal for employees.
  
  
• Isolate corporate and personal data on devices to assure the highest level of security for corporate data.
  
  
• Prohibit the exposure of sensitive corporate data by disabling the ability to forward a corporate email to a personal account or open it in third party applications.
  
  
• Wipe only corporate data from a device while leaving personal data intact.

Customers interested in MDM can get an overview from the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Mobile Device Management Software (May 17, 2012).

To Partners: CounterPath has found that the CCS opens up the enterprise channel in a unique way by assisting in the delivering process of the softclient from CounterPath through partners to the final enterprise end user. For SIP-based VoIP providers looking for iOS and Android solutions for their service, CounterPath offers two partner tracks – either as a CounterPath-SIP affiliate, or as a white label service provider. The company also offers a referral program for VARs.