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Article : The Open Comms Server Arrives

Although 'open' telephony has been talked about for years, until recently, most telecoms equipment has been remarkably proprietary. Even telephone systems built around PC hardware have mainly relied on proprietary software products, making it difficult to integrate them with other systems and virtually impossible to mix-and-match applications from different vendors in a single system. Rebecca Wright, Marketing Manager for Syntellect Europe, discusses the changing situation and why this is important for call centres.

Until now there has been a lack of agreement within the CT industry about what constitutes 'open telephony'. If one looks at solutions available today, you will find a mish-mash of different architectural approaches – from essentially proprietary boxes offering open interfaces, right through to the latest CT Server solutions that enable end users to build bespoke solutions using software products from different vendors. In the terms of this article, open telephony systems are able to integrate with other technologies provided by a variety of vendors.

Although these varied approaches indicate a relatively immature industry, 'open' telephony is starting to find favour amongst end users for two key reasons. First and foremost, because end users have come to realise open telephony systems work; and secondly because equipment manufacturers have become more open to meet the needs of the large telephony users.

Initially, enterprises and public network operators were wary of the reliability of systems based on PC technologies, which most open telephony systems are. Today, companies use such technology in even the most mission critical operations, such as web servers or customer databases. The fact that around 50% of computer telephony board sales made by Dialogic Telecom Europe to public network operators are destined for Windows NT based systems surely says it all.

'Open' telephony systems have found a ready market in areas such as service providers or operations centres, both of whom require integrated technology. 'Open' telephony technologies have created a new generation of systems that provide gateway facilities to take calls from competitive networks, identify callers, handle calling card transactions, monitor calls for billing purposes and provide a range of enhanced network services from IVR to fax and voice mail.

If end users want simple telephone switches – or even telephone switches with ACD or 'intelligent screen pop' functionality – they can get that from proprietary-based telephone switches offering open interfaces. They don't need PC-based multi application comms servers offering switching, voice mail, fax, CTI, predictive dialling etc. in a single box – especially if the price is higher than that of a tried and trusted proprietary switch.

Call Centre Optimisation

The call centre is another example of a large telephony user that requires open telephony systems to maximise their customer contact strategies. Products such as Syntellect's Vista platform provides a range of applications from Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and Interactive Web Response (IWR) to Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) and agent desktop productivity tools. Vista also supports Advanced Speech Recognition (ASR) capabilities – enabling customers to interact with the automated call handling system by either speaking commands or by giving commands via a touch tone phone.

The reason these systems are finding favour amongst end users is because they can deliver significant end user benefits. Not only can open telephony platforms reduce the cost of ownership for companies seeking to deploy several different applications by reducing hardware and software costs - they can also provide tighter integration between different services because all applications can reside within a single box.

These are important considerations for call centre operators. With organisations looking to build on their call centre operations by turning them into customer contact centres capable of handling customer enquiries via multiple media (email, phone, fax, Web etc.), operators know that open systems are essential for combining new and existing technologies and knowledge bases.

When it comes to 'unassisted interactions', for example, customer contact centres already extensively utilise self service technologies such as IVR, IWR, ASR systems, email and the Internet. For 'high value assisted interactions', operators are starting to use voice, fax and email distribution products that combine customer routing rules engines with powerful Customer Service Representative (CSR) desktop clients and collaboration features. While for 'mass market assisted interactions', CTI technology has already revolutionised the way calls are handled in medium to large call centres.

Combining these applications on a single open platform makes a great deal of sense. Especially, if 'open' means that end users can pick best-of-breed solutions that work together in a seamless manner. Syntellect, like many other customer contact centre technology suppliers, recognises technology is moving so fast that no single supplier can hope to develop best of breed solutions in each area of customer contact - unassisted interactions, high value assisted interactions and mass market assisted interactions. By working with partners, i.e. experts in fields such as multi media call distribution, automatic email response and case-based reasoning, and by integrating their technologies with its Vista platform, however, Syntellect believes that operators can reap the full benefit of open systems.

The ECTF

The Enterprise Computer Telephony Forum (ECTF) has been working for several years to develop a comprehensive open telephony framework and a detailed set of specifications for software and hardware developers. The membership roster of the ECTF is an impressive list of about 100 suppliers and developers as well as large enterprise end users, and the goal is open telephony and multi-vendor interoperability.

ECTF specifications cover everything from voice/media cards to high-level application interfaces. Now that a number of these specifications have been completed and published, suppliers are quietly rolling out hardware and software products worldwide. Well over 50 ECTF-compliant products are currently on the market, ushering in the beginning of the open telephony revolution.

In 1998, debate raged about whether the ECTF S.100 specification or Microsoft's TAPI 3.0 would win as the open telephony application interface. Those debates were quieted in March of this year, when at the CT-Expo show in Los Angeles, Microsoft and Dialogic announced a joint agreement to integrate Dialogic's ECTF-compliant CT Media middleware into Windows NT. CT Media is the industry's only computer telephony (CT) development platform for developing standards-based CT servers that can support multiple applications from different vendors.

The integration of CT Media into Windows NT will make NT the world's first open telephony operating system, allowing multi-vendor applications to share telephony resources through either S.100 or TAPI 3.0. With the integration of CT Media, Windows NT will provide shared media services, shared administration services and true best-of-breed application interoperability on generic, open telephony servers.

Companies currently supporting the CT Media initiative include: Aspect, Cisco (SummaFour), Compaq, Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Nortel, Philips Speech Processing, Rockwell and more. In June 1999, Intel joined this growing list when it announced it was to acquire Dialogic for $778m.

In September 1999, Intel announced a further initiative to develop the community of CT Media developers. The company is to invest $200 million in an equity fund to support companies developing initiatives in voice and data communications, with single investments of up to $10m being offered.

Open telephony is great allowing users to configure an all-in-one PBX, ACD, voice mail, auto attendant, IVR and predictive dialling system on a single server, using their choice of applications from various suppliers. However, even more significant will be the impact on enterprise call centres. Because of its scalability, the ECTF open telephony framework provides for multi-server, multi-location high volume call centre configurations including full redundancy and hot-swappable compact PCI voice/media cards.

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Published: Monday, July 21, 2003

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