Hot news Springs from the industry

Spring marks the time when nature comes alive with new vegetation in all of its variety and diversity. So, too, will the call center market. You are about to witness an incredible potpourri of new products designed to rejuvenate your buying spirit. To aid you in digesting this incredible crop of product introductions and upgrades, I've assembled some of the most impressive news to help you make purchases that suit your needs.

Fixed-PrIce/Timellne CTI Solutlons

Aspect Telecommunications announced that its Consulting Systems Integration Team is one of the call center industry's first systems integrators to deliver fixedprice, multivendor, customized CTI solutions. Aspect's consulting division has over 500 middleware installations under its belt and feels it is in a position to price applications such as data-directed call routing and synchronized voice/data screen pop in advance of installation. Aspect tells me their implementation cycles are as short as a few weeks. Contrast this to open-ended integration programs that span an unspecified duration of many months. Some of the leading-edge features Aspect delivers are Webbased HTML scriptwriting and mixed-media cradle-tograve reporting.

Aspect feels, and I agree, that the barrier to CTI implementation in call center environments has been the need for large systems integrators that are very expensive and provide few guarantees. I'm glad to see the industry is moving toward a fixed pricing model that can only help the market expand more quickly. Please see www.aspect.com or call 408-325-4137 for more information.

Internet Options

Lucent has made three announcements regarding its DEFINITY Enterprise Communications Server (ECS).

This new name, which evolved from the Lucent PBX, signifies the broader role the DEFINITY ECS family now plays in a corporation's multimedia network infrastructure.

The first major announcement is the most revolutionary I have heard of from a major switch vendor, and Lucent should be commended for their insight. Lucent, already known for their Internet telephony gateways and Internet telephony development products from their Elemedia division, is bringing their Internet telephony expertise to their DEFINITY switch as well.

By introducing IP telephony trunk interfaces directly to the switch/server itself, the need for an independent gateway is eliminated. For the first time, the least-cost routing and class-of-service features on a major PBX can integrate with the IP trunk interface, giving network managers the ability to add the Internet and other packet networks as alternative routes for voice and fax services. The 24 ports of IP telephony will cost roughly $25,000 and will be available in the Fall of 1998.

The July issue of CTI magazine (also published by Technology Marketing Corporation) featured a product from a company called Data Race that impressed the engineers of TMCTM Labs. The product is composed of a corporate remote access server accessed by personal multiplexing cards on external laptops. The device wowed us by allowing any user with a laptop to call in to the network and simultaneously connect to the corporate PBX as well. In this fashion, the user was able to share network data and simultaneously receive, make, transfer and conference calls on the corporate PBX through a GUI on the laptop. We were so impressed that we made it a cover story. Having recently met with some resellers of the Be There product, I am thoroughly convinced that this type of product should be in every corporation.

Our great impression of the Be There product is what helped us really appreciate Lucent's second big announcement: a DEFINITY Extender - a single-box remote voice/data solution. Three flavors of the product span: voice only; voice/data; and ISDN BRI, which enable telecommuters and remote call center agents to send voice and data over a single line. The Be There product was designed for a laptop and subsequently had the telephone interface as a GUI on the computer, which many people find awkward. Although the PC should ideally make a good telephone interface, the fact is there is a certain comfort level users experience when using a telephone. As a computer hardware and software engineer, I consider myself extremely comfortable with computers. However, when it comes to choosing between using the telephone at my desk or the PC, I often choose the phone since the interface is so comfortable and quick. To that end, Lucent uses a standard DEFINITY telephone at the remote office location complete with four-digit dialing to the office, multiple line appearances and display information.

Note to resellers: IDC predicts that the telecommuting market will grow 11.3 percent annually until the year 2001. Expect these products to catch fire in the next few years. The current price is between $1,095 to $1,495 per module.

Finally, the DEFINITY ATM module, coupled with enhancements to the Distributed Communication Systems (DCS) and QSIG, allows customers with multiple DEFINITY ECSs to connect them through ATM. An ATM services card converts all signaling and traffic seamlessly across the ATM network, which can be handle 241 concurrent telephone calls. Please see www.lucent.com for more information.

Keeping Tabs...

Dynamic Instruments, Inc. is a company that has produced some incredibly engineered products (including communications recorder products) and recently decided they intend to become a major player in the call center market. After spending three hours in their plant learning about their background and products, I have no doubt they will make good on their intent.

Many logging products used in call center environments do double-duty in emergency notification centers. Police departments, 911 centers and other emergency services are a natural fit for these products. Yet it is not unusual for companies in this product category to play in the general call center environment as well. What separates Dynamic Instruments from their competitors is the fact that they have extensive production experience in military installations. Recorders used in airborne, ground support and shipboard applications are designed alongside their commercial counterparts. In effect, the military is subsidizing the R&D effort that allows them to bring state-of-the-art products into the call center. By amortizing the development cost among their various product lines, they are able to provide their customers with great value.

With their product more than 1,000 channel hours can be recorded on a single magneto optical disk or DAT tape and can scale to 1,024 channels. OS/2 Warp is the operating system the recorder uses, however, this is not the sole platform that the software runs on. Recognizing that not all potential users of the recording system are physically located near the server, a Lite version is available for Windows 95 as well. Full control of the GUI is available to the user while listening to the recordings over a telephone connected to the PBX. For more information, please call Jeff Jameson at 619-278-4900 or visit www.dynamicinst.com.

The Emergence Of Trub Open Systems

The traditional call center technology market has always had a reputation of offering only closed systems. In fact, in 1982 when Technology Marketing Corporation first launched Telemarketing & Call Center Solutions TM magazine, there were only a few major players in the call center market. Back then, we called these centers telemarketing centers; the term call center came into vogue in the early 1990s.

One of the major players in the early 1980s was Rockwell. Their ACDs were an integral part of many of the first large call centers. Having closely followed the call center and computer industries for most of my life, I always considered all PBX and ACD products to be inherently closed. Of course, large switch vendors realized this as well and established OAI (open application interface) links to allow third-party products to control their switches. CallPath (from IBM), TSAPI and TAPI all work at various levels to control the switch. But none of these solutions are perfect, each has their strengths and weaknesses. Overall, these open interfaces haven't gone into the depth necessary to ferret out the information needed from each specific switch. Furthermore, the core functions available to these open interfaces only allowed access to the functions of the switch with which you were communicating. The PBX market doesn't really have a 100 percent open CTI solution yet. The ACD market is in even worse shape. With more features, functions and data streams, there has really been no way to get deep enough inside the ACD to create comprehensive thirdparty applications.

That situation is changing. When I recently visited Rockwell to discuss a new product introduction, I went in to the meeting with the perception of Rockwell being a huge, closed ACD vendor. That meeting, which I expected to be over in little more than 20 minutes, ended up with four hours of discussion. Rockwell has announced an incredible new concept in the call center market. Briefly, they have totally opened up their switch to a level I have not previously seen. Their solution exemplifies the tight integration between the computer and telephony switch. What really stands out in their new product, the Call Center Command Server (3CS), is that their interface to the data streams emitted from the ACD are Active X controls. By abstracting the information available from the ACD and allowing access to this information through these controls, an average Windows developer can quickly access information from the switch as if he or she were querying information from a database through OI)BC. The controls are linked to the switch and can be bound to visual controls such as data grids or any other control you choose. Later this year, Rockwell plans to release a product that allows you to control the ACD events as well as view them.

In adhering to open standards, Rockwell based their call model on the CSTA Phase III specifications that were developed by Versit and subsequently submitted to ECMA, a Europebased, worldwide standards body. (See www.ecma.ch for more information.) Rockwell seems genuinely interested in opening up the once closed ACD. Millions of Visual Basic and other application developers who never heard of an ACD, or a call center for that matter, can now quickly become proficient in once extremely complicated CTI programming. Active X is commonplace in the PC and database world, and hopefully this is the first step in bringing it to the world of telecommunications.

The only barrier left to true openness is the ability to write an Active X-based application for the Rockwell ACD and have it seamlessly run on ACDs from Siemens, Aspect, Nortel and others. I hope every switch vendor reads this and responds. The floodgates of incredible new CTI products will open up the same day that a simple VB application can run seamlessly across all PBXs and ACDs. If there was ever a way to drive increased switch sales and upgrades, complete software openness is it. For more information, see www.ecd.rockwell.com.

Turnkey Solutions Through Partnership

Siemens Business Communication Systems, with a strong presence in call centers between 40 and 400 seats, recently announced a partnership with Siebel Systems. They will partner to provide turnkey solutions with seamless installation and integration. Siebel software products are designed to offer users a sales, marketing and customer service information solution that is functionally comprehensive, built upon a modern technology foundation and scales to meet the requirements of global organizations with thousands of concurrent users and very large data stores. The core products Siebel Systems provides are Sales Enterprise and Service Enterprise.

Siebel Sales Enterprise is a robust family of object-oriented, client/server applications designed to meet sales and marketing information requirements of any corporation. Their systems scale to meet the needs of even the largest multinational corporations. Their solution provides a customer information system, a product information system, a competitive information system and a market information system.

Siebel Service Enterprise is also based on a client/server architecture and integrates seamlessly with the Sales Enterprise system. When used together, these products are designed to provide organizations with the ability to create a "closed loop" flow of information between sales and service operations.

The alliance brings together the powerful call center functionality of Siebel Sales Enterprise and Siebel Service Enterprise call center software, plus CTI middleware, ACD hardware, systems integration and training as well as installation of related computer and networking systems from Siemens. The goal of this alliance is to provide corporations with the ability to utilize their call centers as a competitive advantage, maximize the lifetime value of customers and create a bottom-line profit.

Siemens will distribute Siebel's products as part of its ProCenter line of call center offerings and Siebel will provide marketing support and customer referrals.

By providing a single point of accountability and support, the new alliance will allow corporations to purchase complete call center solutions, including all necessary hardware and software, without the fear of insufficient support, training or the all-too-common installation headaches. For more information, please see www.siemenscom.com or www.siebel.com.

BY RICH TEHRANI, GROUP PUBLISHER, TECHNOLOGY MARKETING CORPORATION

Sincerely yours,

Rich Tehrani Group Publisher (TA rtehrani @ tmcnet.com

Copyright Technology Marketing Corporation Mar 1998
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