PanTerra Unified Cloud Services: Built for Large Enterprises

PANTERRA UNIFIED CLOUD SERVICES: BUILT FOR LARGE ENTERPRISES

Executive Summary

Migration of IT services to the cloud is mainstream now as the benefits are substantial while the risks/challenges continue to be mitigated. However, all cloud service providers are not created equally (just as not all on-premises equipment providers are created equally). Indeed, there are many factors that differentiate cloud service providers that enterprises must consider to have a successful and pain free migration to and continued operation of cloud services.

PanTerra differentiates itself as the leading business-class unified cloud service provider, exceeding the competition on all important consideration factors which include:

Experience and Expertise – PanTerra is both a technology and service provider and our focus from the start was to deliver enterprise cloud services. The technology, infrastructure, operations and support structures are all built to deliver ultra-reliable, secure, mission critical operations. Enterprise is our DNA.

Enterprise Administration and Billing Features – PanTerra’s administration portal and billing system is optimized for large centralized or distributed enterprises with multi level, multi-user privileges and support for multiple-cost centers and payment types.

Unique Unified Cloud Services Solution – PanTerra is the only cloud provider to deliver a unified cloud service experience, seamlessly integrating unified communications, collaborations, contact center, file sync & share and business analytics into a single customizable cloud solution. This simplifies administration, significantly reduces operating costs and greatly improves end user productivity.

Ultra-High Service Attribute Cloud Infrastructure – PanTerra’s enterprise cloud infrastructure is built from the ground up to deliver ultra-high levels of reliability, availability, security, scalability, Quality of Service (QoS), Service Level Agreement (SLA) and support, maintaining a historically proven 99.999+% level of reliability.

“100% Ownership” Customer Satisfaction – PanTerra’s customer satisfaction mission is “100% ownership” of any issue with the service, no matter what the root cause is. We will not re-direct you to another vendor. We will work all issues until resolved and you are satisfied… period.

PanTerra is 100% committed to your success and we have put in place all the pieces of the solution to deliver the best enterprise cloud experience on the planet! Let us help you move your IT infrastructure into the 21st century. If you’re not satisfied, we provide a 30-day money back guarantee.

Our Vision, DNA, Experience and Expertise is All About Large Enterprises

The cloud offers IT departments the opportunity to outsource their IT services to cloud companies that can supposedly deliver high levels of scalability, reliability, security and accessibility because these cloud companies have the domain expertise and experience in delivering cloud services that most IT departments lack. Indeed, building and delivering a cloud service can be challenging. Building a “business level” cloud service is even more challenging for many cloud companies. In fact, many of the cloud companies today have put their primary focus on the feature content of their service and not the actual delivery characteristics or service attributes. For businesses, the quality of delivery is as important as the service itself.

PanTerra’s very DNA comes from delivering ultra-high service attribute telecom services over the past decades. Indeed, while many first-generation cloud service providers have essentially migrated their consumer-based solutions or on-premises based solutions to the cloud, PanTerra’s approach was born as a business-class, mission-critical, multi-service cloud solution from day one. Delivering multiple realtime business critical cloud services can only be done by a team of people that has delivered missioncritical IT services before.

When a cloud provider uses 3rd party technology (such as BroadSoft), service outage times will increase due to the inherent communications and procedural latencies between companies.

Thousands of companies depend on the cloud service provider to deliver real-time services with quality, scalability, reliability and security 24/7 so that they can focus on their core-business, that is and has always been PanTerra’s vision and mission from the beginning.

PanTerra’s management team has over 100 years of expertise and experience delivering mission-critical telecommunications services to fortune 1000 enterprises around the world.

Face it, there is little dispute that the cloud offers transformative advantages for businesses looking for that competitive edge. However, migrating an IT service to the cloud can be challenging even for the most capable in-house IT staff. Security, privacy, scalability, reliability, mobile device support, deployment and maintainability are all areas that require cloud IT expertise. Imagine moving multiple IT services to multiple separate cloud service providers and having to manage them as a cohesive set of high quality services. If not done properly, those transformative cloud advantages can be completely negated by business continuity outages, inter-service QoS conflicts, security breaches and frustrating quality of service issues.

PanTerra has over five hundred person-years of experience building, delivering and maintaining business-critical cloud solutions. We are business cloud experts. Our company DNA comes from many of the companies that built the first generation of ultra-reliable cloud infrastructures. Thousands of companies depend on PanTerra to run their businesses, having successfully migrated their communications, collaborations, file sync & share and analytics services to the PanTerra cloud. 

Ask your prospective cloud vendor the following questions:

• How long have you been delivering Enterprise Cloud solutions?
  Many first generation cloud hosted VoIP providers started off as consumer services and not business level services. After getting to a certain size, they simply added or changed their tag line to “Business or Enterprise Services.” Enterprise services require a level of business continuity (reliability and availability) and Quality of Service (QoS) that consumer services simply don’t need and thus aren’t architected to deliver. Who do you want to trust your enterprise to…an inherent consumer-based cloud service provider or a true “built from the ground up” enterprise-class service provider? Select a service provider that started with enterprise services and is focused solely on delivering enterprise cloud services.
  
  
  
• Is your cloud technology developed by you or do you license/use 3rd party technology? Or did you acquire 3rd party technology?
  Critical to a successful cloud experience is utilizing a cloud provider that developed the technology behind their service. There are two majot benefits to this: one, significantly reduces outage “downtime” because the team that developed the cloud technology is within the same company that is providing the service; and two, significantly better support experience, because the support team is within the same company as the development team. In the case of a 3rd party technology provider or even if the service provider acquired the 3rd party company, the “distance” between the technology team and the ops and support teams can be great, resulting in longer outages and slower support responsiveness. Select a service provider that not only deploys cloud services, but also delevoped their cloud technology.
  
  
• Do you offer a complete end-to-end solution including circuits, networking equipment and phones?
  There are many moving parts to a cloud solution: the service itself, the IP broadband circuit connecting the service to the customer’s location(s), the on-premises networking equipment, the local LAN and the actual endpoints (IP Phones and desktop clients). Having a single service provider that can deliver, install and manage ALL the pieces will result in quicker deployments, less downtime, lower IT adminsitration costs and significantly less support issues. Select a service provider that can deliver a complete end-to-end solution.

When a cloud provider doesn’t offer broadband connectivity or certified networking hardware, they are compromising overall reliability and availability due to inherent multi-vendor resolution inefficiencies. This means “extended outages.”

• Do you offer a fully managed version of your solution?
  Managing IT services in today’s highly competitive, mission-critical environments is challenging for any IT department. Outsourcing your IT services to a cloud service provider doesn’t necessarily reduce that challenge. If the cloud service provider simply provides the service as a self-managed service, then it is still up to the in-house IT department to manage, maintain, configure and debug/support the service. Selecting a cloud service provider that offers a fully managed solution can significantly lift the IT burden of the service and allows the service experts to manage, maintain and deploy the service, leaving your in-house IT team to focus on more enterprise centric areas. Select a service provider that offers a fully managed solution.

Enterprise Administration, Billing and Security Features

Enterprise Administration

Administration of a single cloud service can be daunting, but administrating multiple services from multiple vendor portals can be impossible. With PanTerra’s single administration portal and advanced enterprise features, PanTerra simplifies cloud administration, significantly reducing IT resource requirements.

PanTerra’s enterprise administration features include:

• ✓ Single administration portal – PanTerra provides a single browser-based administration portal for managing all its cloud services: unified communications, collaborations, contact center, file sync & share and analytics services.
• ✓ Multi-user select - Perform administrative actions to multiple users and groups by simply doing the action to a single user. The system then automatically applies the action to all users/groups. This saves tons of admin time!
• ✓ Group contact management - Create and manage global groups that can be made visible to all users in the account. Creating once saves time and makes it easier to manage (modify once too). Groups are instantly available to all PanTerra cloud services.
• ✓ Detailed ad hoc and scheduled reports – Fine-tune your enterprise through detailed reports that can be created in real-time or periodically run and delivered to you.
• ✓ Multi-user/multi-level administrative control – Assign administrative role to any user(s) in the account with multiple privilege levels/roles. Create sub-account administrators that manage only a set of users and account features. Set up “virtual administrators” for users outside the account (such as a trusted IT consultant) to gain access to the administration portal.
• ✓ Manage users, devices and account level features in same portal – manage all services, users, account level features (such as call queues and auto attendants) and devices (IP Phones, conference phones) all within the same portal.
• ✓ Spreadsheet import/export - Create or modify/add to large accounts instantly with a single spreadsheet import. Export current configuration easily as well.
  
  

Enterprise Billing

Enterprise cost center management and analysis can be a key area of optimization for enterprises. Cloud services need to adapt to various billing infrastructures and configurations. PanTerra’s advanced enterprise billing system provides unlimited billing flexibility for enterprises that want their cloud services cost structure to fully integrate with their existing cost structure. With PanTerra, everything from centralized corporate billing to distributed “franchise” billing can be configured.

PanTerra's enterprise billing features include:

• ✓ Customizable billing groups - Billing groups can represent locations, regions, corporate functions or any division/group within the enterprise. Thus, you can create any billing infrastructure you want from a centralized single invoice to a distributed "franchise" model to
  anything in-between.
• ✓ Separate billing statements and invoices - Create billing statements (that are not actual invoices) for reports or analysis separate from actual billing invoices. Billing statements can be used by managers and finance departments to track expenses.
• ✓ Multi-level billing invoices and statements with multi-level subtotaling - Create any number of billing sub-totals within the account and “roll-up” multiple billing statements or invoices. This allows for unlimited flexibility in billing for an enterprise. For example, you can have invoices per location or region and a central billing statement that aggregates all invoices together into a full account billing statement. Or you can have billing statements for each location and a single corporate billing invoice with each location sub-totaled.
• ✓ Phased roll-out of account – Phase the rollout of an account over time. Add new locations or groups or change any location at any time. Changes to billing are made within the same day.
• ✓ Multiple billing types within an account - Multiple billing types can be assigned per billing invoice, including multiple credit cards or manual invoicing per invoice. This is perfect for distributed "franchise" invoicing where each location receives a separate invoice and can select a separate payment type.
• ✓ Line item cost splitting between billing groups – Any line item can be split between multiple billing invoices. So, for example, if a user splits his/her time between two locations (in two separate invoice groups), then the admin can split the user’s seat cost between the two invoices.
  
  

Enhanced Enterprise Security

Enterprise security for cloud services is critical and cloud service providers can either follow the industry or lead it. PanTerra leads by being both technology and service provider. Utilizing the most advanced cloud security technologies available, PanTerra integrates enhanced security into their unified cloud services to protect and secure content and communications across the enterprise. Interoperability features with existing security systems and environments means that you can be confident PanTerra’s services will fit into your existing security environment.

PanTerra's enterprise security enhancements include:

• ✓ Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) on ALL devices - Includes desktops, mobile devices and IP Phones. This virtually eliminates VoIP phone hacking, which can cost companies thousands of dollars! Additional MFA administrative tools are also provided including IP range white and black listing and administration MFA request approval.

• ✓ Single Sign On (SSO) authentication - Allows single secure sign on to PanTerra services through industry standard SAML 2.0 providers including active directory, OneLogin and Okta.
• ✓ Full encryption in-transit and at-rest – All content and communications transmitted from PanTerra’s data centers to customer locations is fully encrypted both in-transit and at-rest within the data centers.
• ✓ HIPAA compliance - PanTerra supports full HIPAA compliance for all communications and content and provides full BAA agreements.
• ✓ SmartBand MPLS - PanTerra offers its own managed fully secure, meshed MPLS network for maximum security and QoS. PanTerra’s SmartBand MPLS is the most pervasive, cost effective way to ensure secure access to all enterprise locations as well as PanTerra cloud services.
• ✓ International calling limits – PanTerra implements per user, per country, per day dollar limits for international calling. These limits can be adjusted by administrators or PanTerra and can prevent a VoIP hacker that gains access to an enterprise’s account from racking up thousands of dollars in international relay calling.
• ✓ Multiple Active Device Manager (MADM) - Allows any user or admin to remotely lock out any device that might be stolen or lost.
• ✓ Re-assign owner - Allows admins to instantly re-assign SmartBox content to another user. This is useful when an employee is terminated.
• ✓ Ultra-secure data centers – Employing latest physical and cyber security technology, PanTerra’s data centers are hardened to attacks including DOS, DDOS, unauthorized access, and viruses. Data center operations is constantly scanning and monitoring for cyber-attacks and continuously monitoring for new viruses and patching any at-risk software.

Our Unique Unified Cloud Solution is Unmatched in the Industry

Today, enterprises are taking advantage of the benefits of a cloud solution as they migrate their IT services to the cloud. In fact, more and more enterprises are taking the next logical choice and moving multiple IT services to the cloud: communications, collaborations, file sync & share, and analytics are all services that benefit from a cloud implementation.

However, moving multiple IT services to the cloud can impose some new challenges and problems. Multiple administration portals, inter-service conflicts, inconsistent service attributes such as security and higher aggregate service costs are all real challenges that can result if multiple cloud service providers don’t “play well together.” And when they don’t, resolving inter-service issues can be virtually impossible as the “finger pointing game” becomes a real scenario.

PanTerra’s Unified Cloud Service Approach

PanTerra delivers a Unified Cloud Service solution that combines unified communications, collaborations, file sync & share and business analytics into a single fully customizable cloud solution. Enterprises can tailor each user within the company with the necessary features to match their role within the company. If their role changes, they can easily add or remove features instantly. Being 100% cloud deployed means that all services are consistently deployable anywhere in the world with the same service attributes.

Much like what Office did to personal productivity software, PanTerra’s unified cloud solution does to the Cloud, delivering a unified experience, ease of use, higher productivity, lower cost and simplified management across multiple cloud services.

Without any dedicated on-premises hardware, PanTerra’s service is FutureProof, essentially eliminating service obsolescence and making so called “rip and replace” strategies a thing of the past. As new technologies are made available to the industry, PanTerra can integrate them into the service and instantly deploy them to customers. The replacement of “heavy” client-side software programs, susceptible to virus injection and requiring complex version management, are replaced with browserbased clients that allow anywhere access to PanTerra services. Mobile apps provide an optimal interface for mobile devices, complementing desktop and IP phone access. Users can truly take their complete office environment with them including files, documents, calls, messages, and even web meetings.

Security is of paramount concern with cloud services and PanTerra adds significant security features above and beyond other cloud service providers. PanTerra data centers implement the most stringent physical as well as cyber security measures available to ensure security and continuous operations. PanTerra’s enhanced security and privacy measures allow it to offer full HIPAA compliance. Along with its SmartBand MPLS offering, PanTerra offers the most secure end-to-end environment for those customers seeking HIPAA level security for their cloud services.

Hosted VoIP customers are susceptible to IP phone hacking which can cost customers tens of thousands of dollars per attack. PanTerra implements full Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) on all mobile devices, desktops and IP phones, a first in the industry, virtually eliminating this type of attack.

PanTerra is the only provider to implement Multi-Factor Authentication on all desktops, mobile devices and IP Phones. With MFA, VoIP hackers cannot relay illegal VoIP minutes on your account by simply acquiring the IP phone credentials of one of your users. Indeed, VoIP phone hacking costs enterprises millions of dollars each year; but with PanTerra, VoIP phone hacking is virtually eliminated. In addition, PanTerra implements per user, per day, per country international charge limits so that in the event a hacker does gain access to a user’s account, their potential cost damage is limited, much like how credit cards monitor and limit unusual transactions. PanTerra also implements full encryption in-transit and atrest for content to ensure both security and privacy of cloud content. A Multiple Active Device Manager (MADM) feature monitors all active devices connected to the service and allows any user or administrator to lock out a device that might be stolen or lost. PanTerra’s unified cloud service is the most secure endto-end cloud solution in the market.

Back-end administration of PanTerra’s unified cloud solution is also unified providing a single browserbased administration portal to manage all services. Common management tasks include user/team/group management, account level service management such as auto attendants, contact center management, and advanced billing. Multi-select user capabilities make it easy to support larger enterprises and to make changes to several users quickly.

Advanced billing capabilities allow complete customization of billing statements and invoices to accommodate virtually any cost center structure a large enterprise might have. From a simple centralized single invoice structure to more complex per location invoicing or a hybrid of aggregate multiple location invoicing or multiple payment mode support, PanTerra’s advanced billing capabilities provide ultimate flexibility to match an enterprise’s existing cost structure. Separate multi-level billing statements and line item cost splitting are also configurable.

SmartBand, PanTerra’s own broadband solution, can be deployed as an open Internet connection or as a fully meshed, VPN secure, QoS enabled SmartBand MPLS connection. Both are fully deployed and managed by PanTerra.

As part of an end-to-end solution, PanTerra also optionally provides SmartBand circuits to connect customer locations to their cloud service. Customers can select from a broad range of speeds from T-1 to over 10 Gb/sec Ethernet over Copper (EoC). In addition, both Open Internet and MPLS connections are supported. SmartBand MPLS is available in over 85 markets to over 10 million business locations and provides a fully meshed, VPN secure, multi-level QoS connection to PanTerra’s cloud. SmartBand is the broadest connection offering available today.

Finally, PanTerra offers SentraCloud, its fully managed version of the solution which includes the managed cloud service, managed SmartBand connectivity, managed on-premises networking equipment and managed IP phones. With SentraCloud, customers have a single point of ownership for their end-to-end cloud solution. 

A unified cloud solution can have a major impact on productivity for both IT staff and more importantly, every employee in the company. By significantly reducing or eliminating redundant or repetitive tasks that each employee must perform daily to utilize the cloud services, a unified cloud solution allows more of each employee’s time to be directed towards positively impacting revenue for the company. Take for example the amount of time a user wastes managing all the groups of contacts they use on a daily basis to collaborate with other employees or people outside of their company. Creating groups to do a web meeting or conference call or group IM. Adjusting groups when new people get involved. Now imagine doing that in 3 or 4 or 5 different cloud services: your file sharing service, then your web conferencing service, etc.… This wasted time adds up. 

Impact Unified Cloud Services Solution has on Productivity and a Company’s Revenue

Employees can waste an average of 15 to 30 minutes a day doing these kinds of redundant tasks instead of spending it on driving sales. The above table shows the positive impact on a company’s revenue stream a unified cloud services solution can have. Conversely, implementing separate cloud services can decrease productivity and negatively impact sales and revenue.

PanTerra’s unified cloud services solution includes:

PanTerra Streams delivers leading edge unified communications capabilities to an enterprise maximizing productivity, eliminating upfront capital expenses and costly “rip & replace” obsolescence strategies, reducing on-going operating expenses, and simplifying administration and management.

Key Streams features include:

✓ Unlimited audio/video calling
✓ Intelligent follow-me/find-me call routing including call blasting and sequential routing
✓ Secure IM with real-time integrated presence
✓ Unlimited audio/video conferencing
✓ Unlimited deskshare and web meeting
✓ Cloud call recording
✓ Full contact management including Google, Yahoo, Outlook importing
✓ BLA/BLF, call parking, supervisory modes
✓ Digital Faxing
✓ Outlook, Salesforce, Office 365 plugins
✓ Unlimited ring groups, auto attendants
✓ Fully integrated with Streams Contact Center
✓ Fully integrated with SmartBox file sync & share (communications content stored in SmartBox)
✓ Mobile app support

Streams Contact Center delivers enterprise level contact center capabilities significantly improving the customer experience while providing enhanced resource flexibility and supervisory monitoring and reporting tools. With built-in real-time analytics, enterprises can fine tune their businesses, maximizing customer satisfaction and top line revenue while optimizing agent resources and infrastructure costs.

Key Streams Contact Center features include:

✓ Unlimited queues and minutes
✓ Built-in analytics with over 100+ customizable performance SLA/KPI metrics
✓ Intelligent routing including skills-based, round-robin, next available, longest idle and random
✓ Real-time live monitoring of all agents
✓ Supervisory modes including silent listen, whisper and barge-in
✓ Call-Back When First in Queue and Pull Caller Out of Queue
✓ Cloud call recording
✓ Real-time and scheduled detailed reporting
✓ Fully integrated with Streams PBX
✓ Fully integrated with SmartBox file sync & share
✓ Mobile app support

SmartBox is an enterprise File Sync & Share solution with built-in communications and collaboration features that allow users to maximize engagement with customers by sharing, communicating, and collaborating all in a single solution.

Key SmartBox features include:

✓ Unlimited secure cloud storage
✓ Multiple share privileges (viewer, editor, co-owner, owner)
✓ Share any file/folder at any level
✓ Communications content stored in same cloud (Voicemail, faxes, recordings, attachments)
✓ Unlimited independent local sync clients
✓ Unlimited file versioning and file locking
✓ Share event notifications
✓ Password protection and temporary sharing
✓ Trash bin and undelete
✓ Fully integrated Streams communications features
✓ Fully integrated contact management
✓ Mobile app support

Unified Business Analytics allows businesses to fine tune their businesses in real-time with over 100+ customizable SLA/KPI performance metrics. Provides a common analytics framework for communications, content and financial analytics.

Key Unified Business Analytics features include:

✓ 100+ customizable SLA/KPI performance metrics
✓ Real-time live analytics monitoring
✓ Ad hoc and scheduled analytics reports
✓ Multi-level, multi-user supervisory notifications
✓ Monitor analytics for any user within the account (not just contact center agents)
✓ Instant corrective action capabilities thru unified communications features
✓ Fully integrated with Streams, Streams Contact Center and SmartBox file sync & share
✓ Mobile app support

Our Cloud Infrastructure Guarantees Ultra-High Service Attributes

PanTerra's unified cloud solution is a 100% cloud solution delivered from a network of secure, hardened cloud data centers. These data centers provide multiple layers of both physical and cyber security to protect customer content and ensure reliable non-stop operation of the service. Redundant components at virtually every level ensure that no single point of failure, including a massive data center failure, can cause a service outage. This is critical when businesses consider migration to the cloud.

However, hardware redundancy is not the only important factor to consider when looking at a cloud service provider. In fact, there are seven key cloud attributes that are critical for any cloud service provider. The seven key attributes include:

1. Reliability – Reliability is the measurement of how often a service “fails.” The inverse of this is Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) which is the average uptime between failures of the service. The higher the MTBF the more reliable the service can be and the less likely the service will fail. With cloud services, there are many components to delivering the service including the local LAN and networking equipment, the last mile circuit, the backbone carrier and the data center with all its various components. Each one of these components has an MTBF and reliability number. Taken together, the reliability of the whole system can be less than the reliability of the least reliable component.

PanTerra’s unique ultra-reliable architecture and fully managed approach to its cloud service means that it can guarantee a minimum of 99.999% reliability for its service. With extensive expertise in building reliable business-class cloud networks, PanTerra has architected its cloud service to be ultra-reliable, maximizing MTBF for all components in the service and thus maximizing reliability, virtually eliminating service outages. When combined with our ultra-high level of availability (ability to recover from an outage instantly), business continuity for all its cloud services is maintained 24/7.

Software related outages, last-mile broadband circuits and on-premise disasters (power outages, non-redundant equipment failures, etc.) contribute more to cloud service outages than hardware failures at a cloud data center.

2. Availability – Availability goes hand in hand with reliability in determining how available the service is or conversely how long a service is unavailable. Availability is the inverse of how long a service is unavailable (outage time) when it does fail. Taken together with Reliability, these terms determine how often and how long a service will be “down” and unavailable which means your employees are “down” and non productive. Both terms are important. You can have a service that is reliable (doesn’t fail often), but has a low availability indicating that when the service does fail, it is “down” for long periods of time. Conversely you can have a service that recovers faster from an outage (higher availability) but has a lower reliability, i.e. it fails more often. In both cases, company impact and employee productivity can be significantly impacted.

PanTerra has the highest level of availability (and reliability) in the industry and has
historical metrics to prove it. Over the past 4 years, PanTerra has delivered a proven track record of over 99.999% availability for its services with no full-service outage lasting longer than a few minutes. This is not only due to its state of the art hardware and software redundancy architecture, but also to its 24/7 operations monitoring team, QoS managed circuits, certified networking and end-point equipment and its business-based cloud DNA expertise and experience. PanTerra has more experience and expertise in delivering enterprise-class unified cloud services than any other vendor in the industry.

3. Scalability – One of the biggest advantages of cloud is the ability to scale service globally through the theoretical addition of new data centers. While this may sound easy, adding data centers and interconnecting them in such a way that service can be consistently accessible is not easy. Some cloud service providers that depend on 3rd party technology vendors to provide the service are challenged to deploy and maintain the same version of that technology across all data centers or be faced with inconsistent features or operations between each data center. This can be very counter-productive to a company that depends on service consistency.

PanTerra is both service provider and technology provider. PanTerra doesn’t rely or depend on any 3rd party technology provider so it is better able to deliver globally consistent scalable services around the world. In addition, PanTerra’s N+1 per service scaling architecture means that it can increase scale on any service, both within a particular data center or by adding additional data centers, ensuring optimal cost effective scaling for each service.

4. Security – Cloud security has been a much talked about topic for many years. Extending the IT infrastructure outside of the physical confines of a corporate building can pose security challenges both physically as well as in cyberspace. Over the past couple of years, however, business cloud service providers have made tremendous progress in securing the cloud environment for enterprises to confidently migrate to the cloud. Key to ensuring a secure cloud service environment is working with a service provider that can provide end-to-end security from endpoints (IP phones, desktops and mobile devices) to secure broadband connections and secure cloud services themselves.

PanTerra delivers complete end-to-end enhanced security and privacy features that keep business communications and content maximally secure. With advanced features, such as multi-factor authentication (MFA) on all endpoints (including IP phones), secure MPLS broadband connectivity, full encryption in-transit and at-rest for all user and communications content, mobile device remote management and multi-level administration, PanTerra’s unified cloud services provides a robust and secure cloud environment for your enterprise.

5. Quality of Service (QoS) – Quality of Service is one of the most important cloud service attributes as it can negatively impact productivity for every employee in the company and it can occur instantaneously at any time without warning. Additionally, QoS may be impacted by external factors; more so in certain cloud service providers than others. As more IT services are moved to the cloud, inter-service QoS issues will also become a more frequent occurrence challenging even the best cloud service provider to be able to resolve. 3rd party circuits, networking equipment, data center bandwidth and scalable software architectures all play a role in determining QoS.

PanTerra delivers the highest level of QoS by ensuring that every component in the solution has QoS and is monitored for QoS. PanTerra is the only cloud service provider to offer a fully managed solution with guaranteed QoS over open Internet and MPLS connectivity. In addition, PanTerra’s unique multi-service management ensures QoS between PanTerra’s cloud services; so, real-time voice services always maintain highest priority. Only PanTerra can offer this inter-service QoS guarantee.

Quality of Service (QoS) depends on many factors including cloud service architecture, broadband bandwidth, transport control and on-premise network implementation. PanTerra delivers complete end-to-end QoS management through QoS managed cloud services, SmartBand MPLS circuits and SentraCloud on-premise managed networking equipment.

6. Service Level Agreement (SLA) – The SLA represents the actual legal “meat” behind all the service attributes. It is how the cloud service provider stands behind their service and exactly what guaranteed service levels it will deliver the service at. The SLA should be reviewed for level and completeness in covering all seven service attributes listed here.

PanTerra’s SLA is the highest in the industry, guaranteeing availability, QoS and support levels to ensure your IT services are delivered at continuous peak performance and continuity. PanTerra has a historically proven track record in delivering enterprise-level cloud services to meet your enterprise’s demanding needs.

7. Support – Support is key when outsourcing your business-critical IT services to a cloud service provider. When an issue arises, getting fast and accurate support can have a major impact on your bottom line. Understanding the support escalation process is critical to resolving issues in a timely manner.

PanTerra delivers the most comprehensive and responsive support in the industry. With multi-media access to support including a 30 second live IM support option, PanTerra guarantees a response to a customer issue within 30 seconds! And PanTerra’s “100% ownership” philosophy guarantees that you will not be “passed” to another vendor even if the problem is with a 3rd party vendor. PanTerra will be involved until the issue is completely resolved.

Considering these seven service attributes for a single cloud service is challenging enough, but when considering migration of several IT services to the cloud, these seven key service attributes can be virtually impossible to manage and maintain if each cloud service is provided from different cloud providers. Imagine migrating your PBX to one cloud provider, your collaboration to another provider and your file sync and share to another service provider. Each cloud service provider will have different or varying levels of each of these seven service attributes. Even more troubling is that one cloud vendor’s solution may negatively impact a service attribute from another cloud service provider. For example, unloading gigabytes of files to the file sharing cloud might cause QoS issues with your voice or video calls if they happen at the same time. These kinds of inter-service QoS are virtually impossible to debug and
resolve when multiple providers are involved. 

PanTerra’s Ultra-High Service Attributes are Consistently Delivered Across All Services

With PanTerra’s unified cloud services solution, all cloud services are delivered from a single secure cloud. This ensures consistent cloud service attributes across all services.

Moving multiple IT services to multiple separate cloud service providers can have disastrous results due to inter-service resource conflict. Imagine trying to run a web meeting from one service while another service tries to sync 100 GB of content to local desktops.

In addition, inter-service QoS impact is eliminated since PanTerra controls and manages all the services in parallel, prioritizing real-time critical services over non real-time services. Finally, PanTerra’s unified cloud services approach significantly reduces ongoing operating costs since there is only a single ultrareliable cloud infrastructure as opposed to the costs associated with multiple separate clouds infrastructures.

Our “Hands-On” On-Boarding Process Doesn’t Leave You in the Dark

Selecting a cloud service provider should not just be about the features and service itself. There are many more factors to consider when selecting a cloud provider. One of the most important and often overlooked critical areas is the on-boarding process that the service provider uses both for the initial deployment as well as new incremental deployments which most likely will occur over the course of time. New locations need to be provisioned, an existing location may move to a new location or some existing locations may require changes.

It is critical to engage a cloud service provider that is going to truly be hands-on during the on-boarding process. Communications within a large organization are complex and require careful planning and review to match end user and corporate requirements to the networking environment. Auto attendant setups, ring groups, analytics, contact center agent configurations, and call routing plans are just some of
the configurations that go into setting up cloud communications.

PanTerra takes a complete “hands-on” approach to the on-boarding process, providing all the necessary human resources to make the migration to the cloud as easy and painless as possible. A multi-step design review methodology is employed involving the customer, PanTerra and optionally the 3rd party IT vendor. Current networking environments and equipment are reviewed for acceptable compliance, telephone numbers are mapped out, circuits are optionally ordered and tracked, LNP porting is ordered, auto attendants and ring groups are created and if necessary, new networking equipment and/or IP phones are ordered.

PanTerra on-boarding is an “all hands on deck” philosophy versus “here, you do it and here’s our web knowledge-base if you have problems.” During each and every step, PanTerra manages, coordinates and tracks the on-boarding process to make sure everything goes smoothly during the migration. And if a new location is added or an existing location needs to be moved, PanTerra resources are available to make that transition as smooth as possible as well.

Our 24/7 Customer Satisfaction Commitment is to “Go the Extra Mile”

Enterprises depend on their IT services 24 x 7. They are mission-critical to the enterprise and when there is an issue, getting resolution as quickly as possible is paramount. There are four key aspects to determining customer satisfaction with a cloud service:

• Customer Support Access/Availability – How accessible and available is the provider’s customer support? Are there multiple ways to contact support? Is there live phone support 24 x 7?
• Ownership – Does the cloud provider take ownership of all issues or do they forward issues to 3rd party vendors?
• Resolution Time – Does the cloud provider own the technology so they can affect resolution faster? Do they have a formal escalation process?
• Follow-Up – Does the cloud provider follow-up in a timely manner? Is there pro-active follow-up?

PanTerra is dedicated to 100% customer satisfaction and delivers on each and every one of the key aspects above, going the extra mile for our customers.

Often, time-to-resolution is more about minimizing the number of vendors involved and maximizing single vendor ownership. PanTerra takes 100% ownership of all support issues, regardless of the source.

With live 24 x 7 customer support to instant 30 second response time for IM support, businesses get immediate access to the support they need when an issue arises. And PanTerra takes 100% ownership of the issue, regardless of whether the issue is with PanTerra, a broadband carrier, some 3rd party networking equipment or any other remote entity. PanTerra will never push a customer off. Being both the service and technology provider also allows PanTerra to resolve service issues in a more expedient manner since support personnel have direct access to the engineering developers.

With PanTerra customer satisfaction starts the minute you become a customer and never stops being our number one priority.

We are 100% Commitment to Your Enterprise’s Success

In today’s competitive fast moving business world, you need a cloud partner that is 100% focused on your enterprise’s success. With our mission-critical business DNA, PanTerra delivers that 100% focus with a proven holistic approach that includes not just the cloud service itself but all the necessary pieces of the solution to guarantee peace of mind that your IT services will deliver leading edge features with ultrareliable and secure operations, backed by world-class enterprise level support. 

Migrating to the cloud has incredible benefits and PanTerra can get your enterprise into the cloud faster, more reliably and secure than anyone else on the planet. Contact PanTerra (602.900.8565) directly or a PanTerra partner today and get a free live demo and see how your enterprise can immediately benefit from PanTerra’s Unified Cloud Services.