Communicado on March 28 announced enhancements to its Streamline Management as a Service Platform that will make it easier for managed services providers to remotely deliver, monitor and manage customers' converged voice and data networks.

The unified communications space is ripe with opportunities for VARs and MSPs to bring voice and data technology to their customers, regardless of size, said Kerry Shih, chief strategist and co-founder of Communicado.

"Unified communications is an ever-changing upgrade cycle. This is going to put so much stress on existing infrastructure that companies are going to need VARs, your trusted advisor, and they are going to need help," said Shih.

The new Streamline version 2.3 integrates with existing network management systems and includes specialized tools for monitoring legacy PBX systems. These features make Streamline ideal for VARs whose customers want to slowly upgrade their communications systems from a reactive, break/fix "alarm monitoring" service to a more proactive, fully monitored approach.

Streamline 2.3 includes a new event dashboard, automatic reporting capabilities, the ability for VARs to remotely access a customer's network without changing network or firewall settings and a multi-customer portal through which Communicado can optimize performance for all VARs delivering the company's services.

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Tim Brennan, vice president of Crytycal Services Management, a communications management and monitoring services provider said the new features will help his customers maintain high voice and data quality and continuous uptime.

Brennan said his company's customers include both major communications carriers and also some VARs that aren't able to provide communications services to their clients. In those cases, Brennan said, Crytycal provides the services to the end customer through those VARs that self-brand the service. He added that Communicado's Streamline is ideal because of its flexibility and scalability to any size customer.

"Each of our customers has a unique need, and Communicado's Streamline product can evolve and be tweaked on-the-fly to help us better accommodate those customers," he said.

Communicado's support and training far exceeded Brennan's expectations, which he said is a challenge in the fluid communications industry that changes lightning fast.

Streamline 2.3 is available immediately, and is platform and operating system agnostic.