The promise of voice, video, data, and wireless service convergence is finally here and, as a result, service quality matters now more than ever. By improving the efficiency of the delivery of these next-generation, IP-based services, convergence continues to enhance the way the world communicates, interacts, conducts business, and entertains.

In order to deliver these converged services, carriers, cable operators, and content providers are moving to an all-IP and Ethernet world to take advantage of economies of scale and the benefits of IP-based convergence: operational savings, integrated applications, and exciting new services unavailable from the siloed service platforms of the past.  Together with the emergence of new service frameworks, such as IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), these bundled offerings are driving fierce competition between all service providers as they strive to meet the demands of quality-savvy consumers and demanding business clients.

However, the addition of these new, interactive applications -- VoIP, IPTV, click-to-talk, interactive gaming, etc. -- creates significant QoS risks based on increased infrastructure complexity and network demands. And because of the competitive nature of the marketplace, if a provider cannot consistently deliver quality services, it will lose customers to another provider who promises and, more importantly, delivers service quality.

Converged Service Assurance solutions uniquely combine active (on-demand) testing and passive (live) monitoring of IP-based services and infrastructures to allow service providers, network operators, and large enterprises to offer their users reliable, high-quality voice, video, data, and mobile services. And, these converged service assurance tools deliver the network visibility required to transition from proprietary, legacy, back-office tools to next-generation, open, and standards-based solutions.

In essence, converged service assurance is focused on delivering quality of experience for today's demanding end users.  With an end-to-end converged service assurance solution, carriers, service providers, and large enterprises gain a competitive advantage in delivering next-generation "triple play" services and new mobile service offerings.