Here's a press release I just got in email. I confess that I'm not familiar with Packet Island, although a VoIP management plug-and-play appliance certainly brings some appeal to the SMB market. I am familiar with Pandora Networks and think they're doing some trend-setting things that make them worth watching.

Packet Island introduces new plug-and-play micro-appliance for VoIP lifecycle management

Santa Clara, CA — Packet Island today announced general availability of its next generation micro-appliance, which forms an essential part of its PacketSmart solution.

The PacketSmart solution is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution that enables VoIP service providers and VARs to pre-assess SMB networks for VoIP readiness, and provide a continuous VoIP monitoring service to ensure carrier-grade service levels. The solution is based on purpose-built micro-appliances that work with the highly scalable PacketSmart SaaS platform, hosted at a Tier-1 data center.

The new micro-appliance, which comes in a 4” x 4.5” silver-colored, brushed aluminum case, incorporates several new capabilities:

• Fail-safe operation (no network disruption even during power failure)
• Ability to work in front of NAT firewalls
• Ability to work with mirrored switch ports
• VLAN support
• Higher performance
• LCD display to simplify deployment troubleshooting

In addition to the above new features and capabilities, the new micro-appliance includes several firmware enhancements to further simplify plug-and-play operation in a vast variety of SMB network environments.

Pandora Networks, a leading VoIP Service Provider, has been using Packet Island’s PacketSmart VoIP Lifecycle Management solution to provide VoIP network assessment and ongoing VoIP monitoring services to its SMB customers. "Very often we encounter network topologies in SMB environments that make it difficult to insert an inline device for VoIP monitoring. Packet Island has delivered an elegant solution to this problem with their new micro-appliance. With this new micro-appliance, Packet Island has taken the term “plug-and-play” to a whole new level.” said James Walker, Pandora Networks’ Vice President of Professional Services.

“Deploying VoIP over pre-existing data networks is a big challenge that many of our VoIP service provider and VAR customers face today. Troubleshooting VoIP quality problems adds even more complexity to this challenge, because of the need to understand the SMB customer’s internal network. Since our micro-appliance is essential in this troubleshooting process, we’ve taken extra effort to make it easily deployable in a vast variety of SMB network configurations.” said Praveen Kumar, Co-founder & President of Packet Island.

About Packet Island
Founded in 2004, Packet Island Inc. is a venture-backed company located in Santa Clara, California. Since its founding, Packet Island has pioneered the development of award-winning SaaS-based solutions for managing multi-site converged media networks. More information can be found at http://www.packetisland.com

About Pandora Networks
Pandora Networks is a leading provider of hosted IP Communications for the small or mid-sized business. The Company's Worksmart solution integrates voice and IP calling, switchboard and call-distribution services, instant messaging and conferencing, with options for advanced collaboration and call-center support. Pandora's service-based On-Demand delivery keeps capital investment low and aligns operating expense to business value. Services are sold exclusively through service providers, distributors and resellers under their private labels, the Company's Worksmart(TM) brand, or co-branded. The Company is privately held with headquarters in Emeryville, California. For more information, visit http://www.pandoranetworks.com or call (800) 805-0558.