inventing the superstructure of things -...

Inventing the Superstructure of Things

Multinodal Management for the UC&C Landscape with IoT Extensibility

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The Pinnaca SUPERSTRUCTURE of Things

By Clive Sawkins, Chief ExecutiveMarch 10, 2017

Communication has evolved radically since Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the first telephone patent in 1876. But did he ever imagine the complexities involved with visual communication? Nearly 150 years later, enterprises continue to struggle with video. Why is this?

Video is exponentially more complicated than audio. That’s why Pinnaca has engineered a powerful cloud engine to automate the UC&C landscape. Finally, an umbrella superstructure for the underlying infrastructure of UC&C. Moreover, the cloud controlled engine brings with it a programmable rule-based framework; if the device is addressable, it’s controllable via the IoT extensibility agent.

Alexander Graham Bell would be proud.

Table of Contents

3 Introduction3 ...............IoT Installed Base, Global Market, Billions

4 Defining and Solving the Problem

5 The Pinnaca Story5 .............. A Recent Merger5 .............. Pinnaca’s Primary Focus5 .............. Pinnaca’s Reach5 .............. Types of Customers6 .............. The Significance of UC&C in a Digital Economy: the relation between time-to- market and ROI6 .............. The Pinnaca Journey Continues

7 Pinnaca Strategy and Vision7 .............. Identifying the Need for Visual Collaboration8 .............. Designing Clarity, Not Simplicity9 .............. The Superstructure of Things 9 .............. An Overview10 ............ Major Ecosystems11 .............. Proxy Platform11 .............. ERP Platform - Accpac12 ............. ERP Platform - NetSuite12 .............. CRM Platform - Sage12 ............. CRM Platform - ServiceNow13 ............. Pinnaca Portal13 ............. Non-Portal Websites14 ............. CDR Remediation14 ............. Partner Reporting Automation14 ............. ACLP Platform15 ............. Email - Operational Monitoring15 ............. Database

16 Security Assurance

17 Bibliography

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Introduction

IoT Installed Base, Global Market, Billions

(Columbus, 2016), Roundup of Internet of Things, Forecasts and Market Estimates; Forbes Magazine, November 2016

A communication revolution is profoundly changing the face of society from only ten years earlier. No longer are the top marketplace names dominated by oil giants and automotive manufacturers. The tide has turned, and the world has become captivated with innovative technology, especially communication platforms such as Facebook, Slack, Skype, Twitter, Instagram, Amazon Chime, and others.

• Facebook reports 1.79 billion monthly users as of September 2016 (Statista, 2016).

• Mobile phone users are “expected to pass the five billion mark by 2019” currently measuring 4.77 billion (Statista, 2016).

• Skype has more than 300 million monthly users actively using the platform (Millman, 2016).

A study by Forbes Magazine confirms this new trend, showing a radical departure from the past ten years: three of the top five global companies are communication technology driven: Apple, Google and Microsoft (Chen,

2014). The Online Investor reports a similar trend; nearly forty percent of the top twenty U.S. companies empower communication technologies: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Verizon, AT&T, and Oracle (The Online Investor, 2014).

But could this be just the beginning? According to predictions by McKinsey & Company, IDC, and others, human-to-human communication will be eclipsed by the desire to communicate with “things” – the Internet of Things (IoT), already 17 billion devices strong as of 2017, predicted to grow to 75 billion by 2025.

Pinnaca is uniquely positioned as a communications company to foster not only human-to-human communication in today’s marketplace, but Pinnaca is distinctively equipped to integrate monitoring and control of all our important “things” in this growing enterprise market. Pinnaca’s Superstructure of Things (PSoT) has arrived just in time, leading the way to automate one’s communication imagination.

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Defining and Solving the Problem

Whether a smaller company or a larger enterprise, the results hold true: collaborating companies produce more revenue than companies that struggle to collaborate.

But successful collaboration is about more than acquiring the latest technology. A company may purchase a leading technology from Cisco or Polycom, and totally fail if it is not implemented with best practices, integrated into the enterprise with automation. But further challenges arise when companies have mixed endpoints and infrastructure, including soft clients, mobile phones and tablets, changing network conditions (bitrates, firewalls, teleworking), different types of content sharing, different resolutions, SIP vs H323, and much more.

Furthermore, companies are wanting to integrate intelligent devices with UC&C meetings: when the conference starts, digital signage should reflect this, mark the resource as unavailable, and other programmable functions.

This is part of the Pinnaca Superstructure, the umbrella that wraps around resources and processes to deliver repeatable automation.

Both big and small companies communicate and collaborate, but not all companies do this particularly well. A study by Accenture shows that higher collaborating companies “generate higher rates of revenue growth (Hintermann, Vazirani, & Mirshokrai, 2016)”.

“Our mission is to innovate with vendor neutrality, automate wherever possible, design flexibility to support all customer requirements, and employ the best tools for the task.”Russell Chan, CIO

Collaborating companies produce higher rates of revenue growth

year after year. Source: Accenture

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The Pinnaca Story

Pinnaca’s Primary FocusPinnaca’s primary aim is to deliver excellence in the user experience. Every aspect of the service, end-to-end, is managed by the Superstructure of Things, from automated conference initiation to monitoring vital performance metrics. By employing the Superstructure of Things, enterprises have flexibility to incorporate many unique business processes into conference workflows, such as conference start-up processes, event correlation triggers, conference wind-up actions, and reporting automation.

When these specificities are integrated into a company’s business processes, it drives the highest levels of usage and adoption, a key measurement of success. Focusing on technology is not enough; the result must deliver a repeatable, superlative experience. That’s what drives adoption.

Pinnaca’s ReachPinnaca is global. Operating facilities and fail-over architectures are located in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Hong Kong, delivering 24/7, follow-the-sun support.

Pinnaca’s cloud service ecosystem sits on top of large tier 1 carriers with international peering arrangements.

Types of CustomersPinnaca’s customers are typically multinational enterprises that have zero tolerance for error, viewing visual collaboration as a mission-critical application. Some of the world’s largest carriers resell the Pinnaca service to similar customers under a white label model, powered behind the scenes by the Pinnaca Superstructure of Things. Key verticals include healthcare, education, justice, governments, legal and financial services.

Pinnaca is a tenured, independent provider of managed videoconferencing, telepresence and visual collaboration services. The company is privately held and head-quartered in Berkshire, United Kingdom with regional offices in Minnesota, Toronto, Singapore, Shanghai and Hong Kong. As a trusted partner with 17 years of experience, Pinnaca helps enterprises and governments navigate the UC&C landscape, providing customized state-of-the-art products, services and solutions from the world’s finest manufacturers.

A Recent MergerResulting from a recent merger of BCS Global and Video Guidance, the combined enterprise employs an agnostic approach to technology that allows each customer to choose a solution specific to individual use cases. The merger of BCS Global (established footprints in EMEA and Asia) and Video Guidance (reputable reach throughout North America) has strengthened Pinnaca’s position as a global provider, providing single-source design, delivery, and services to customers worldwide.

“Communication and collaboration is at the core of every society. And innovating UC&C is at the core of Pinnaca. That’s why we’re a trusted adviser and provider to many of the world’s largest companies.”

Clive Sawkins, CEO

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The Significance of UC&C in a Digital Economy: the relation between time-to- market and ROIIn today’s digital economy, UC&C is at the heart of every company, every government, and every society. For Pinnaca, the opportunity is vast. Distributed workforces are becoming the norm, and quality collaboration is a key enabler for time-to-market (TTM).

Writing for Forbes, Jonathan Becher describes why TTM beats ROI as the new indicator of profitability; today’s velocity of business moves too fast for traditional ROI calculations to be accurate indicators. “In the digital economy, you have to assume that the fundamentals of any market will change by the time your product reaches it. You may not know how it will change but you should assume it will change. This means the best indicator of success will likely be TTM” (Becher, 2016).

The Pinnaca Journey ContinuesPinnaca’s future has only just begun in today’s wired world of global commerce. Worldwide population is growing by 225k+ daily, all wanting to communicate and collaborate with one another, near and far. This can only happen with ubiquity and automation, such as the Superstructure of Things.

Beyond this, the IoT is growing to 75 billion connected devices between now and 2025. That’s an average rate of 19 million newly connected devices each day (Columbus, 2016). And people want to communicate with devices in their world. Again, this can only happen with an overarching architecture, a superstructure that governs and automates the complexities of it all, the Pinnaca Superstructure of Things.

DOES COLLABORATION IMPROVE INNOVATION?Yes, according to a recent Nielsen study. Bringing together a diverse team to collaborate generates better concepts.

A recent Nielsen study researched the influence of collaboration in relation to the concept development phase of innovation - when newly innovated solutions may travel a range of diverse routes that will ultimately contour its design, features, competitive acumen, and marketing strategy.

The data showed how “teams of six or more people generate concepts that performed 58% better with consumers in pre-market testing than the brands’ initial starting point concepts” (Nielsen, 2015).

At the core of its business, Pinnaca understands the art of science of communication and collaboration, helping companies focus on their core competency.

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Pinnaca Strategy and Vision

Pinnaca’s strategy starts with listening—understanding a company’s collaboration culture. Pinnaca listens by—• Interviewing professionals in

every area of the company;• Observing how teams collaborate;• Identifying goals and challenges,

habits and trends;• Writing use cases to reflect

the organization’s culture;• Vetting specific requirements that

accentuate the definition of success;• Defining a path that results in

time to market, leading to ROI.

Understanding these elements, Pinnaca compares a company’s requirements with the capabilities of leading UC&C platforms, generating a SWOT analysis against Microsoft, Polycom, Cisco, Pexip, Amazon Chime, Avaya, Broadsoft, and others. The results of this exercise enable Pinnaca to provide exacting guidance to customers, highlighting the best platform that most closely matches the needs of an organization.

But even with the right technology, users will not necessarily employ new tools, or use them rightly. Any successful strategy must employ a path to adoption, even for organizations that resist embracing video in their culture. But when the right technology is coupled with an adoption programme, wrapped in the Superstructure of Things, true ROI is not far off. Because the PSoT is designed to move at the pace the marketplace is moving—at the speed of light.

In 1962, when the Decca Recording Co. told the Beatles that guitar music was on the way out, they didn’t give up their vision by folding to naysayers; no, they pushed forward all the more, and not only changed the sound of music, but changed the world.

The UC&C industry has witnessed changes during the last two decades that caused some analysts to doubt the future of managed services. But Pinnaca found opportunity where others saw challenges, guided by a stream of innovative decisions that has continued to generate new revenue streams and new sets of customers subscribing to Pinnaca services.

Identifying the Need for Visual CollaborationThe Harvard Business Review advises about the importance of calculating “the return on investment by comparing the expected benefits with the costs… but it’s not as simple as it sounds,” especially with the complexities of UC&C (Knight, 2015). Should a company build infrastructure or partner with a provider? Choose OPEX or CAPEX? Explore cloud solutions, on-premise options, or a hybrid approach?

“The best strategies start with listening— understanding how our customers collaborate. Only then can we define use cases, pair technology and processes, and drive measurable adoption.”Dan Tanel, CTO

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Designing Clarity, Not SimplicityPinnaca learned that most users desire “simplicity” as a key requirement. At the same time, teams required features and functionality delivering complex controls and options. It became obvious that not everything can be simple and complex at the same time. Even an Apple iPhone, the hallmark of “simplicity” can be incredibly complex with some aspects.

So what are users really asking when they request simplicity? Clarity. Writing for Wired Magazine, UX designer Rober Hoekman advises, “No matter how complex a design, no matter how many tasks it supports, how many user roles are accommodated, or how many different ways it offers to perform the same daily actions, each and every screen, each and every detail of those screen—they all can be made clear” (Hoekman, 2015). And that is, and has been, Pinnaca’s goal.

The Superstructure of Things is the window by which users and partners interact—or consume—any underlying service. The strategy is not necessarily simplicity; the strategy is clarity in presentation. Writing for E-insights, Don Green says it well: “Put the complexity in the back-end so it doesn’t appear in the user interface” (Green, 2015). He adds, “Simple UI design means that anyone can have access to very sophisticated applications.”

The portal.pinnaca.com platform supports a login area from the main page, and based upon authenticated credentials, extends capabilities to the user to request services from underlying infrastructure. Numerous techniques are employed to permit full featured options whilst maintaining clarity. The following examples are a few of the techniques used to foster adoption by minimizing the learning curve.

For a graphical example, modal windows are employed, appearing inside current window.

The content below the modal window is readable but darkened, with the modal window appearing over top of the content. This minimizes the need to load a new page, employ a pop-up window, or be subject to a redirect. This technique lightens the load on the web server as it has fewer activities to manage.

Controls on demand via Javascript display sets of controls just in time, and only when needed based on the context of the users. This enables the interface to retain functionality whilst presenting clarity until a feature is needed.

Expanding forms are another example of clarity at work. When iterative features are needed, the technique is repeated, similar to how Gmail allows a user to upload more than one attachment iteratively.

Selections and choices can be defaulted, made mandatory or hidden, dynamically based on the needs of the customer and to simplify the experience for the user.

Context based controls are also used, employing actions only applicable to the area being vetted. This eliminates unnecessary menus that reduces the noise that would otherwise lend to confusion.

There are other tactics employed as well to foster clarity and empower adoption. But the overriding strategy as stated by many is the First Law of Simplicity: “The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction” (Maeda, 2006, p. 1). Pinnaca has thoughtfully reduced the confusion by employing these types of principles, based on feedback from customers, resulting in a superlative interface. The Superstructure of Things—it’s not just another portal—it’s innovation at the core of UC&C with IoT extensibility, delivery clarity without sacrificing complexity – all aimed at improving the user experience.

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The Superstructure of Things Taken from the term Internet of Things (IoT), Pinnaca coined the phase Pinnaca Superstructure of Things (PSoT) to describe an overarching architecture encircling many systems for common control and monitoring, ubiquitous portal access regardless of the underlying infrastructure, universal reporting irrespective of the platform, and much more. The superstructure floats above the infrastructure, creating an expanse or separation between the consumer and the services, concealing the systems and complexities beneath.

Pinnaca’s innovation is not a single system, but rather an extensible, scalable ecosystem of disparate systems joined together centrally by an enterprise service bus. In one way, it’s the umbrella that wraps around various manufacturer’s technology, becoming a superstructure of many infrastructure solutions. In another way, it’s the centre of the UC&C universe, glueing together all the disparate systems. As a design goal, this glue is used as a communication point between systems for control, auditing, monitoring, and information flow, creating a translation system so different technologies can “talk” to

one another—a universal translator between otherwise disparate systems that do not communicate the language of other systems.

The following sections examine the PSoT more closely, focusing on the modules and systems that power the diverse Pinnaca portfolio.

An OverviewThe PSoT forms the middleware between all of Pinnaca’s systems, insulating users from the technology driving various services. For instance, a user scheduling a conference would not have to know if the infrastructure and endpoints are manufactured by Cisco, Polycom, Avaya, Microsoft, Ashton Bentley or any others. As the PSoT receives the request from the user, it opens communication channels to each endpoint, translating the request to the right commands. It would also communicate with an email server, verify system availability and conflict avoidance, ensuring sufficient system capacity, and ensuring calendar invites were sent to proper participants, and confirmation messages distributed.

IoTSensorData

Superstructure of Things Platform

DatabaseChanges

Mobile Devices

NativeClients

Data FlowAudit

SchemaManagement

RESTClient

Data Integration Stream Processing

IEPScalable, Reliable, and Fast Logic and

Translation Engine

Apache KafkaMessage Processing Layer

Salesforce

EnterpriseData Stores

Real-TimeData Apps

Netsuite

RDBMS

DataWarehouse

CRM

Infrastructure

Search

Dashboards

CDRs

Security /Auditing

CustomApplication

Real-timeAnalytics

Monitoring

Alerting

ExternalConnectors

ExternalConnectors

Kafka OpsDashboard

WebsiteEvents

Logs

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As the glue that connects all the disparate systems together, automation is possible across an entire ecosystem. A large benefit to this allows Pinnaca to continue to leverage improvements in tooling and to be able to replace componentry in the architecture as they are not tightly coupled. In effect, it allows Pinnaca to practice agility and leverage workflows to provide functionality at rapid speeds.

Supporting a modular and distributable design, the superstructure architecture allows multiple instances of itself to communicate with one another using a distributed, scalable messaging architecture – Apache Kafka. By employing this mechanism, messages are distributed to one or many target destinations, all with durability, and distribution across multiple nodes. The result? Trusted security relationships with high scalability.

Ma jor EcosystemsAs depicted in the diagram, the superstructure encircles major services consumed by users. The users may be customers, partners, or internal Pinnaca staff employing tools for customer service, billing, monitoring, incident management, scheduling, and many more activities. For instance, a Pinnaca operator may use the superstructure to view uptime of endpoints, which is collected as a monitored device using Zenoss. This information is used by the PSoT, and enriched by additional endpoint configuration information from Sage CRM, which contains the system name, IP address, network mask, SNMP information, customer and primary contact information and other necessary data, providing much needed context for the original source information.

Whether the systems in the outer ring are cloud enabled or corporate servers, they each communicate with the superstructure, enabling information flow and awareness between disparate systems that would normally not integrate directly. The takeaway from this architecture is that the information flows between all of these systems traverse through the superstructure, serving as the middleware and translator for both automated and user initiated sessions.

Within the inner circles are a number of unified communication and

collaboration platforms, forming a lattice of

cloud architectures for subscribing consumers.

One customer may be serviced by Polycom, and another by Pexip or Cisco, and yet another may use a combination of technologies depending on the pairing

configuration that was determined

during the customer interview process.

Internally, Pinnaca consumes services from

several systems using the PSoT portal. The PSoT aggregates

views, correlates data, and triggers event correlations based upon predefined settings that credentialed users may change.

The rulebook architectures permit clever definitions to be applied to data elements that trigger activities in many platforms. Never before has the UC&C landscape been controllable with such flexibility and specificity. The Superstructure of Things has created true ubiquity amongst diverse systems, scalable for partners and customers alike.

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Proxy PlatformThe proxy platform is the outward facing element of the superstructure from a communication viewpoint. The proxy serves a number of purposes, providing security protection for the internal core of critical system services. In particular, the advantages of the proxy configuration:• Reduce the port footprint

for external access.• Reduce the unauthorized / unwanted

access to the internal platform.• Provide additional logging/auditing/

control points to the internal platform.• Provide a platform appropriate for

DMZ deployment but providing external proxy access to the PSoT.

With this configuration, Pinnaca’s deployment has passed ISO27001:2013 certification, specifically adhering to the Annex A.13 control “Communications Security” in order to satisfy the objective to protect information in networks and supporting information processing facilities. This also satisfies the requirement of 13.1.3 to practice segregation in networks. The proxy platform consists of globally deployed fault tolerant nodes which are orchestrated and managed by automated deployment software on virtualized platforms.

As mentioned, in conformance to Annex A.13, the proxy element sits within the DMZ. Accordingly, the following nomenclature is helpful for definition:• External Network (Unsecured

“outside” network)• DMZ Network (semi-trusted

“DMZ” network)• Internal Network (trusted

“internal” network)

ERP Platform - AccpacWithin the superstructure, the ERP platform houses customer billing and order information. In terms of functionality, the PSoT migrates data from the ERP system to the CRM system to smooth and automate order provisioning.

Specifically, the information for the initial population of Customer, Virtual Room, Contact, and Endpoint originate from the native sales order in ERP.

There is limited PSoT interaction with the ERP outside of what’s noted here; however, there are new feature requests on the horizon that will enhance this service. It should be noted that data flow and interaction with the PSoT is one-way only as of this writing: outwards from the ERP.

Finance

CSC NOC Sales

ProductPartners

AAA

Entitlement

Branding

Customers Systems

Reporting

Billing

Ticketing

Managing

Servicing

Security Audit Log LogicAPI

ERP Email CRM/CMDBTicketing

CDR MonitoringTools

ACLP Infra CallControl

SMUIEP

Pinnaca Portal

Workflow

Provisioning

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As a prime example of the replaceability of the elements within the ecosystem, this functionality has now been replaced by NetSuite as below. Accpac exists in order to house legacy data and to adhere to data retention requirements.

ERP Platform - NetSuiteAs noted earlier, the ERP platform contains customer billing and order information. In terms of functionality, the PSoT migrates data from the sales automation platform to the ERP in order to smooth and automate order provisioning. This occurs via specific APIs of each system, and customized tuning within each ecosystem for the UC&C componentry. Further, the environment has a sandbox instance for development and testing.

The automation of information via the PSoT is intended to reduce the manual keying of the information from sales associates into the ERP platform. It provides an additional gate for data movement, workflow, and audit point. It is not expected that this will completely replace all processes, but rather provides a significant starting block which can reduce administrative burden and lower errors that might otherwise occur.

The initial flow of information from the sales platform will:• auto-create accounts if not present;• auto-create orders when relevant;• notify staff of new orders• when they are triggered; and• create audit records of the above.

The ERP is customized and maintained by Pinnaca. The data flow mentioned above is maintained and created by Toronto Systems.

Upon completion of the finance system information, the PSoT will then trigger the flow of data to the operational system creating Customers and CIs for operations.

CRM Platform - SageThe CRM is a key resource used to track customer data, from both a provisioning and maintenance perspective. This is currently the data sink for Customer, Site, Endpoint, Virtual Room, Circuit, Contact and Infrastructure. The current CRM is Sage CRM 6.2. The data entities held within the CRM platform have abstracted to reduce impact in the anticipation that the CRM platform may change in the future.

The Toronto Systems team has highly customized the CRM to meet Pinnaca’s needs and performs this maintenance in-house. For all intensive purposes, the systems team is self-sufficient in maintaining, augmenting, and designing new features in the CRM. Also, CRM integration to the PSoT occurs at multiple levels from API, to forms customization, and directly at the SQL level (views, stored procedures, triggers).

It should be noted that this functionality is in transition. There is already a fully functional standalone CMDB layer built to replace much of this functionality when certain deployments are unable to access cloud platforms due to security requirements.

CRM Platform - ServiceNowThe future CRM platform is intended to follow ITIL processes and standards, with an extensible CMDB built-in. Incident management flows are currently being planned for ServiceNow implementation, which will be integrated in the superstructure model to ensure information flow is available to the portal and other systems. This section will be updated as innovation on this front unfolds.

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Pinnaca PortalThe customer portal is one of the primary ways that customers interface with Pinnaca. The portal not only is used by customers, but also partners, and Pinnaca staff, providing augmented functionality for each use case.

Already, the portal reduces workload from the staff, minimizing errors by collecting information directly from customers, and improves service delivery performance. The portal allows the customer to perform tasks in a friendly, self-service manner, providing reporting and ticketing from anywhere provided that Internet access is visible.

The data visibility of the portal gives customers a better view for their equipment and infrastructure under management. The service request form helps streamline and control customer bookings. Further, the reporting engines permit customers to view performance and utilization metrics in order to determine how much the service is being utilized.

At a high level overview, the portal is:• Multitenant• Fully brandable• Multiple database defined security roles• Multithemed• Hierarchical customer structure

supporting data rollups• Provides role based authentication• Modular

The visual design and functionalities have been maintained in-house as of this writing.Implementation is handled by a combination of Toronto and outsourced staff. However, a newly designed platform built on the PSoT APIs is being rolled out to customers during 2017 providing a fresh new experience.

Non-Portal WebsitesIn addition to the portal, other purpose built websites exist in order to provide benefit to other areas, notably operations. Dashboards exist to prioritize incidents, operator launches, and provision infrastructure. All of these websites use the PSoT APIs, and exist in order to provide more controlled, and auditable access to other systems and infrastructure supporting process adherence.

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CDR RemediationCDR records and their collection are central to Pinnaca’s billing and utilization reporting. As the technological estate continues to grow, Pinnaca continues to add support for additional signalling and video platforms, including Avaya ECS, Cisco VCS, Cisco Codian, Polycom DMA and RMX, Vidyo and Pinnaca’s own BGK to mention a few.

Collection is complicated by varied methods required by the different vendors, as well as their placement in the network. Once collected, the CDRs are placed into the messaging system for transmission into the PSoT.

Within the superstructure, the normalization and remediation of the CDRs are delivered with a number of stored procedures in the database for performance. Currently, there are over 60K records each month which require remediation and billing on the core network. There are additional estates (CHI), and purpose built platforms excluded from these numbers, which are also significant sources of processing, in addition to some with special custom requirements (such as encryption).

This subsystem matches and enriches the CDRs with CRM data for business applicability, rates, flags anomalous behaviour and is used as a core KPI for customer performance. This is created and maintained by Toronto Systems.

Partner Reporting AutomationThe automation reporting engine generates usage/billing reports and upload to partner’s system automatically. It reduces the manual work and human mistakes, and ensures that the data and formatting will be consistent. This system utilizes the information maintained within the databases to produce ad-hoc and ISDN billing reports which are automatically sent to partner systems. Partners invariably have very different billing and reporting systems, and as a requirement, Pinnaca customizes the file formats to match what the partner requires. As a result of the heavy amount of text processing and customizability this requires, Pinnaca currently utilizes Python for this purpose, although there is also a framework within the superstructure to handle this for various scenarios.

This service is created and maintained by Toronto Systems.

ACLP PlatformThe ACLP is a system connected to the superstructure, and is responsible for the MCU management of our systems strategy. The ACLP is designed to support a consistent user interface for all of the various video bridge technologies that Pinnaca supports. The platform itself supports managing calls directly, but it also brings into play some operational scheduling capabilities and the opportunity for automation.

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Specifically, the ACLP itself provides the following:• Vendor independent API abstraction• Single-pane of glass MCU

control and visibility• Auditing records for operator actions• Fine grained control of security

Additionally, integration with the superstructure provides the following:• Automated provisioning of MCUs• Automated provisioning of Rooms• Automated changes of

Room configurations• Alarm notification and ticket creation• Automated creation of meetings

The provisioning and scheduling aspects of the superstructure have been automated, and Pinnaca plans to continue to drive further integration into the platform to the point of allowing basic MCU control to our customers via the portal and mobility interfaces.

The superstructure to ACLP communication interface occurs via SOAP and RESTful invocations.

Email - Operational MonitoringEmail continues to be a significant source of information in the operational world of Pinnaca. In some instances where there is no possibility of API integration, email may be another mechanism for customer’s systems to autonotify Pinnaca.

Email qualify into three categories:• Customer issues• Core monitoring Issues• CHI monitoring Issues

This superstructure subsystem continually monitors a number of email addresses for incoming emails, parses them, qualifies them and will:• Auto-respond in a branded service

fashion (branded to the partner)• Create tickets in the CRM according

to email patterns and rules for qualification, type, and severity

• Add emails as attachments to the tickets• Correlate email conversations

to the tickets

Communication occurs over IMAP and SMTP.

DatabaseUnderlying the superstructure are a number of different databases. The primary database holding much of Pinnaca’s centralized data is Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise. This database is the store for a number of different systems, including the PSoT, CRM, ACLP, and ERP.

Although the number of systems dependent on this system is significant, this machine has the following setup:• High availability redundant setup• Backed up (full export) daily• Log shipping replication to a

third database instance

Additionally, the server build was specifically optimized to be performant under Microsoft current licensing regime.

Where flexibility allows and tight data integration is not required, PostgreSQL under Linux is the next database choice, providing a reasonable level of transactional safety, flexibility, and a reduction in cost.

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Several years ago, Pinnaca set out to implement standard security management practices throughout its offices with complete integration into its Superstructure of Things. Whilst there are many recognized frameworks one may adopt, Pinnaca chose to implement the ISO27001 framework, with ISO27002 controls. By investing in this practice, Pinnaca has taken a holistic approach to embrace security controls throughout the whole organization, not just IT, encompassing people, processes, technology, and external vendors. Pinnaca aims to demonstrate to customers and employees a reason to extend trust to these practices, validating legislative, contractual, and regulatory compliance systematically.

ISO27001 practices require strict adherence that must meet ongoing security audit requirements. Every six months, an auditing agency examines Pinnaca’s practices and audits every aspect of conformity. Only by maintaining strict compliance across many disciplinary areas has Pinnaca maintained our certificate of approval, ensuring an ongoing lifecycle of continuous improvement.

Lloyd’s Register (LRQA) has certified that the Information Security Management System (ISMS) maintained by Pinnaca is in good standing. Whilst the certificate expiry is set for 7-February-2018, surveillance checkpoints occur every six months.

Pinnaca currently complies with ISO/IEC 27001:2013, having moved from ISO/IEC 27001:2005 in April 2015. The certificate is issued to BCS Global Network Ltd., who began doing business as Pinnaca on March 28, 2016.By way of reference, Pinnaca’s certificate number as registered with Lloyds Register Quality Assurance is LRQ 4006642.

In relation to vulnerability management and penetration testing, Pinnaca tests semi-

annually for recent protocol vulnerabilities, such as DROWN, secure and insecure client-initiated renegotiation, BEAST attack (SSLv3), DDOS attacks, POODLE (TLS), POODLE (SSLv3), downgrade attacks, and many more. Patch management unfolds when deficiencies are found, ensuring systems are updated and threats are minimised from external actors.

Security Assurance

Certificate of Approval

Lloyd's Register Group Limited, its affiliates and subsidiaries, including Lloyd's Register Quality Assurance Limited (LRQA), and their respective officers, employees or agents are, individually and collectively, referred to in this clauseas 'Lloyd's Register'. Lloyd's Register assumes no responsibility and shall not be liable to any person for any loss, damage or expense caused by reliance on the information or advice in this document or howsoever provided, unlessthat person has signed a contract with the relevant Lloyd's Register entity for the provision of this information or advice and in that case any responsibility or liability is exclusively on the terms and conditions set out in that contract.Issued By: Lloyd's Register Quality Assurance Ltd, 1 Trinity Park, Bickenhill Lane, Birmingham B37 7ES, United Kingdom

Page 1 of 2

This is to certify that the Management System of:

BCS Global Network LtdTrading As: Pinnaca.com

Keypoint, 17-23 High Street, Slough, SL1 1DY, United Kingdomhas been approved by LRQA to the following standards:

ISO/IEC 27001:2013

David DerrickIssued By: Lloyd's Register Quality Assurance Ltd

This certificate is valid only in association with the certificate schedule bearing the same number on which the locations applicable to this approval are listed.

Current Issue Date: 10 November 2016 Original Approvals:Expiry Date: 7 February 2018 ISO/IEC 27001 8 February 2012Certificate Identity Number: 10006606

Approval Numbers: ISO/IEC 27001 – 0009668

The scope of this approval is applicable to:

Information Security relating to the provision of managed video conferencing and collaboration services in accordance with version 2.n of the Statement of Applicability.

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