Middleware Unshackled
By Andy Green, Teleconnect
Jul 5, 2001 (10:10 AM)
Call centers, vendors, dealers, and VARs have all benefited from
telephony standards. We take for granted the screen-pop on an
agent's desktop. But before Microsoft and telecom standards committees
devised third-party call control, only the largest organizations
could afford a call center because the software that controls
phones and computers had to be built from scratch. With the introduction
of CT middleware, vendors finally appeared on the scene that could
deliver prepackaged, mass-market ACD (automatic call distributor)
software.
Call center apps became more affordable; and call centers for
companies outside the Fortune 500 sprang up. A new standard that
manages media resources, S.100, may change the call center application
landscape again by lowering costs and letting vendors and VARs
craft highly specific call center solutions.
From First- To Third-Party
Call Control
To appreciate S.100's promise, we need to revisit some middleware
history, starting with the kick-off 1.0 release of the Telephone
Application Programming Interface (or TAPI) in the early '90s.
Developed jointly by Microsoft and Intel, TAPI was a layer of
middleware that performed basic telephony functions, like autodialing.
You linked a serial cable between the vendor's modem or digital
phone (modified to hold an RS-232 port) and desktop personal computer.
PC application software made TAPI calls, and the TAPI middleware
translated these computer commands into telephony ones, which
were sent to the PBX via the phone. Because you - or the software
on your desk - were directly communicating with the attached telephony
device, the arrangement was referred to as first-party call control.
The response to TAPI 1.0 from the telecom world was less than
enthusiastic. “The industry looked at TAPI and sort of laughed
at it,” says Murray Judy, vice president of engineering at
San Diego-based Sonant Corporation, a maker of call center ACD
software. “The only thing it turned out to be truly useful
for was modems.
“Modem vendors jumped on TAPI,” he adds. “For
actual telephony, the early versions of TAPI were not very useful.”
One of TAPI's disadvantages: Information collected about the caller
- phone or account number - could not follow the call when it
was transferred, making TAPI 1.0 less than suitable for call center
environments.
TAPI became more useful, especially to PBX vendors, after the
release of version 2.1 in 1998. The upgrade let users control
a desktop phone via an external server (from the vantage point
of the desktop phone). The industry labeled the new architecture
third-party or client-server call control.
“You could write software that would talk to TAPI and allow
you to answer and control calls for telephones that were not your
own,” says Judy. “[TAPI] could be employed in a server
environment rather than a desktop one.”
Judy says that to get into the CT game, PBX vendors needed to
expose enough of their switch's functionality to support Microsoft's
telephony interface. In the Microsoft worldview, vendors of telephony
equipment had to develop the Telephony Service Provider Interface
(TSPI) layer of the middleware, which performed the real work
of controlling the switch. The TAPI acronym is probably more familiar
to Teleconnect readers, but its fame exceeds its actual function.
Judy told me TAPI merely relays commands between the application
and the TSPI.
“All Microsoft really did was provide this common set of
interface calls [TAPI], but it didn't really do anything,”
says Judy. “There's no real functionality built into TAPI.
It requires a service provider [TSP] to do the work.”
Starting with TAPI 2.1, PBX makers wrote the TSPI layer - essentially
a device driver for their switch. They loaded the TSPI onto an
NT server linked to the PBX by a serial cable or other interface.
The single NT server running the CT software became the “CT
server,” the central repository of all call-related information.
Because the server could control calls for each extension, PBX
vendors no longer had to TAPI-enable individual phone sets and
force customers to link ugly cabling between phones and computers.
That kept costs down and made for swifter deployments.
With third-party call control standards now available, independent
developers got into the game of designing “soft” ACDs.
Running as an application on the CT server, call routing software
could send calls to the right agents and deliver the associated
caller ID and IVR-(interactive voice response-) collected data
to the agent's desktop workstations. Communications between desktop
CT applications, like soft-phones and TAPI-compliant PIMs (personal
information managers), and the CT server occurred over the existing
office LAN (local area network).
In parallel with Microsoft's efforts, ECMA (European Computer
Manufacturers Association) standards committee devised a CT standard
for third-party call control, CSTA (Computer Supported Telecommunications
Applications). ECMA brought together computer companies and telecom
company's, AT&T being the most significant member on the voice
side.
Later, Novell adopted CSTA when AT&T sold its UNIX division
to this Provo, UT-based networking company. In the early '90s,
Novell created a programmatic interface for CSTA, called TSAPI
(Telephony Services API), which translated CSTA to Novell Netware.
Novell thereby beat Microsoft to a client-server call control
architecture by several years. In the telecom world, Parsippany,
NJ-based Dialogic (now Intel's Telecommunications and Embedded
Group) incorporated CSTA into its CT Connect middleware. Many
soft ACD vendors, in turn, embedded CT Connect into their call
center software.
Everyone Likes Middleware
Standards
Whether call center software is based on CT Connect, TSAPI, CSTA,
or TAPI 2.1, third-party-based software, with its layers of software
abstraction, hides PBX and telephony device dependencies from
the application software. Call centers buy soft ACDs for their
telephone switches. But when the time comes to replace the phone
system, they can continue to use the same middleware, just switching
one PBX vendor's TSPI for another. The rest of the middleware
infrastructure and applications remain.
Makers of call center software gain from these CT middleware
standards as well. They maintain one set of application code,
which can work with any vendor's switch. Upshot: lower development
costs and lower application prices to call center customers.
However, there's one catch for call center application developers
who build on top of third-party middleware: lower profits because
the developer typically pays a percentage of revenue from software
licenses to the middleware provider.
“Most [developers] start with [Intel/Dialogic's] CT Connect;
and if they see a lot of business with one switch, they write
[the middleware] natively because they don't want to give up the
margin to Dialogic,” says Ernie Wallenstein, VP of marketing
and business development at EasyRun, which integrates CT Connect
into its EPICCenter ACD software.
“For the small to medium business marketplace, the cost
[of adding CT Connect to a call center application] is actually
a percentage point,” he adds. “At the high end, five
or eight grand on a $500,000 deal doesn't mean anything. But five
or eight grand on a $50,000 deal means something.”
Though reducing the developer's margin, the middleware is well
suited to a rapid “go-to-market strategy,” says Wallenstein.
And, if the business looks good, you regain margin by writing
the CT middleware layer yourself.
Back at the Call Center
What do call centers want? Depending on whom you talk to, there
are from 60,000 to 100,000 call centers below 100 seats. Wallenstein
believes this segment, which represents 90% of all call centers,
can't afford, and doesn't necessarily need, all the customer relationship
management (CRM) tools that Fortune 500 companies buy. Even large
enterprises don't always implement, or efficiently use, some contact
center solutions, such as voice over the Web.
Wallenstein (who previously studied the business models of CRM
competitors Aspect Telecommunications and Genesys Telecommunications
Laboratories at software developer Apropos) suggests most small
contact centers would probably be satisfied with the essentials.
These include good skills-based routing; interactive voice response
(IVR) for simple customer requests; multimedia interaction (e.g.,
voice and email); and a quick deployment.
By building apps on top of client-server CT middleware, call
center solutions providers, says Wallenstein, can quickly and
cost-effectively deliver this functionality. Standardized interfaces
to PBXs make for easy installation. Centralized databases in CT
servers drive the routing decisions. If agents are busy, an IVR
application communicating with a voice card on the CT server can
pull up account balances or other customer information in response
to DTMF (dual tone multi-frequency) or touchtones.
CT middleware, embedded in call center ACD applications, brings
caller ID to the desktop, transporting the data via LAN from the
CT server. However, application providers still must integrate
their software with existing customer apps. Yes, a TAPI-compliant
PIM, like Outlook or a soft phone, will work right away. But applications
not designed for telephony, such as a Windows-based data entry
program, present more difficulties.
Microsoft had the answer with its many Windows standards for
exchanging data between applications, like DDE (dynamic data exchange),
OLE (object linking and embedding), and, more recently, COM (component
object model). VARs or dealers who install the CT application
software will usually perform the Windows customization needed
to pass call data to a customer's back-office applications.
Sonant, among other developers, uses the older DDE standard in
its integration work. Sonant's Judy believes DDE is better suited
to pushing small amounts of data between applications. Montreal,
QC-based Elix, which makes turnkey contact center software, has
a 50-member professional staff (and an American VAR network) to
do its customization work. Elix CEO Francois Rainville says his
company has used all the Windows data transfer standards and Active
X hooks. His most difficult challenge is bringing call data to
non-Windows applications, especially legacy back-end applications
running on mainframes. But, he says, it can be done.
Whichever Windows data standard is employed, the integration
work on the desktop bridges the last few inches between the telephone
system and the desktop computer gap, letting call centers pop-up
screens filled with caller specific data.
Media Control Comes to
Middleware
Through its standardization of the PBX interface, CT middleware
brought about the current state of call center software. Although
it's not an insignificant accomplishment, CT middleware was never
concerned with anything more than signaling a telephony device
to control a call. Once the call was connected or a modem connection
made, the CT middleware stepped away, leaving management of the
media content (voice, fax, conferencing, voice-over-IP) to the
proprietary board-level software interfaces. That is, until the
S.100 standard came along.
Paul Jackson, product manager for Brooktrout's S.100-compliant
RealComm middleware, details the genesis of standardized media
control. “In the '80s, a number of companies, ourselves included,
were designing DSP- [digital signal processor-] based voice and
fax processing resources. The driver behind that was the messaging
market: things like voicemail, fax-on-demand, LAN, or fax. There
were no standards regarding media processing, you would need to
know Dialogic's APIs or Brooktrout's.”
“So, way back in about '93 or '94, there was the proposal,
originally I think from Dialogic, of having a system-level architecture,
which was quickly adopted by an industry body ECTF [Enterprise
Computer Telephony Forum] in '95. And the ECTF was created around
this concept of a system architecture that would demystify [these
board APIs].”
Jackson described the S.100 standard as middleware, similar in
its goals to middleware for CT. But, in addition to providing
an interface for controlling PBX switches, S.100 is also the single
interface for managing “media content” - analog hook-flashes,
fax tones, or playing a voice prompt - regardless of which vendor's
board the application is communicating with. And the standard
allows multiple applications to share the same hardware resources,
like digital signal processors, which control and interpret the
media.
The benefits of S.100-based media middleware, like Brooktrout's
RealComm 100 or Dialogic's CT Media, extend to call center application
vendors and, ultimately, customers. The S.100 standard means vendors
such as Elix don't have to reinvent the wheel. Because the interface
is well defined, developers can purchase S.100-compliant modules
if they need to add, say, speech rec to their application or design
a call server. That saves them the cost of developing the software
in-house.
At least, that is what Marc Lachapelle, Elix vice president of
innovations, believes. Opus Maestro, Elix's contact center soft
platform, cooperates with CT Media and RealComm media servers.
In principle, S.100 should let Maestro evolve rapidly as more
third-party modules become available. Lachapelle says there's
no magic with S.100. But because of its well-defined interface,
it allows compliant IVR, speech rec, and fax software from different
vendors to run on the same media server. That was not easy to
do before S.100. Ultimately, call centers should see lower priced
application software. And because of S.100's ability to manage
resources, solutions will scale with less additional hardware.
First-Party Call Control
for Small Call Centers
Citel Citel's (Lake Forest, CA - 949-454-8678) PC Phone is a
low-cost CT middleware alternative to vendor-supplied offerings.
Its Personal Switch adapter is a small multijack box that sits
between your key system phones - the box supports Toshiba, Panasonic
KXTD, and DBS phone systems - and your computer. Once loaded on
your PC, the Citel Link middleware's wizards help you integrate
with Outlook, Goldmine, ACT!, and Maximizer PIMs. The software
is a great choice for small businesses that can't afford more
expensive third-party call control. It starts at around $320 per
seat. See our September 2000 Test Drive.
Telecor The Picazo VS1 is now brought to you by Telecor (Oswego,
IL - 630-236-8400), which acquired the phone system from Intel's
Dialogic unit (now Intel's Telecommunications and Embedded Group)
in December 2000. Telecor's soft phone product, Call98, supports
multiple call handling. To pass caller ID to a Windows application,
you'll probably need to contact an authorized VAR, who can do
that part of the work for you.
Toshiba Toshiba (Irvine, CA - 800-222-5805) Strata DK customers
get classic first-party call control with the StrataLink middleware.
DK phones require the addition of an adapter (around $250), which
links the phone to a desktop computer. Once TAPI and TSPs are
loaded, TAPI-compliant PIMS, like Outlook or ACT!, come alive;
out-bound calling and caller ID trigger screen pops. Other Windows
applications can receive caller ID via DDE, which StrataLink also
supports. But you'll have to do the customization.
Besides basic call control, StrataLink lets you juggle multiple
calls, displaying calls in queues. Voice recording is also supported.
Agents save sessions with customers as a .WAV file on their PC.
Vodavi Vodavi's (Scottsdale, AZ - 800-843-4863) Discovery Desktop
brings soft phones to agent desktops. Virtual buttons lets them
click their way through call transferring, placing callers on
hold, and call conferencing. The app integrates out of the box
with Goldmine. Caller ID is passed to other Windows' applications
via DDE. The software retails for around $500.
In June, Vodavi released its Discovery Link. Complying with TAPI
2.0 lets the software integrate with all the usual PIMs (ACT 2000,
Goldmine Maximizer, and Outlook 2000). The installation program
guides you in linking to your particular contact manager. Vodavi
supports DDE; and with a little bit of work, you can integrate
with other Windows applications, too. Same soft phone features
as the Desktop.
Third-party Call Control
for Large Contact Centers
EasyRun EasyRun's (Jupiter, FL - 561-743-0400) EPICCenter consists
of an EPICEngine blended router and desktop EPICAgent. The EPICEngine
provides skills-based routing using ANI (automatic number identification),
DNIS (dialed number identification service), and call-specific
data collected by the product's IVR module. Statistical routing
smarts direct the Engine to send calls to the group with the best
ASA (average speed of answer). For waiting callers, the Engine
also pipes in MOH (message-/music-on-hold) audio, periodically
interrupting background music with expected wait-time announcements.
The Engine routes email as well. A GUI interface lets you define
routing rules for email and voice.
On the desktop, the EPICAgent toolbar lets agents control the
call from their PC with transfer, login/logout, and resume/release
icons. The app informs agents which callers are in queue and who
has abandoned the queue but left a return phone number. For the
current caller, EPICAgent displays customer data culled from CRM
databases, besides the essential ANI and DNIS numbers. Wrap-up
and status reporting is automatic.
The software passes call-specific data to external desktop applications
via DDE, OLE, or ActiveX objects.
EasyRun sells the EPICCenter Suite of software for $1,000 per
seat.
Elix Formed from the merger of Mediasoft and Prima, Elix (Montreal,
QC, Canada - 514-768-1000) can craft turnkey call center solutions
based on its Opus Maestro middleware. Maestro complies with the
S.100 standard and cooperates with S.100 servers from Brooktrout
(RealComm) and Intel's Telecommunications and Embedded Group (CT
Media). VAR developers can use its Opus Composer to quickly create
applications from ActiveX components.
Call center applications are available directly from Elix or
through a VAR network of more than 150 members. Retails for about
$400 per port.
Intel In May, Intel's Telecommunications and Embedded Group,
(Parsippany, NJ - 800-884-8337), formerly Dialogic, made generally
available its Intel Converged Communications Platform (ICCP).
The comms server combines Intel hardware and software from TEG's
S.100-compliant CT Media middleware. VARs will especially appreciate
the ICCP's advantages. They can purchase software modules needed
to create voicemail, soft ACD, fax servers, unified messaging,
and other PBX functionality - all on the same platform - from
a CT Media Value network member (see the box). A CT Media software
development kit lets them do customizations. For example, with
the right modules from Elix, VARs can mold the ICCP into third-party
control middleware that includes a skills-based router.
Spanlink Call centers looking for a fast-popping application
that does more than the basics will want to examine SpanLink Communications'
(Minneapolis, MN - 617-971-2300) FastCall CT software suite, which
won our '99 Product of the Year award. On the desktop, users can
fit the very flexible FastCall Agent profile into any available
space. Besides showing caller info - CLID (calling line identification)
ANI, and DNIS - the app includes standard call control buttons
(pickup, dial, and transfer) and ten programmable speed dial buttons.
DDE and OLE compliance means the software can launch a PIM or
other cooperating application.
The software's neat macro recorder feature gives this pop-up
application an edge over others in its class. Administrators can
record the keystrokes to launch an email application, fax, or
whatever other frequent activity makes up an agent's workday.
Users assign keystrokes to a button on the FastCall window, which
are replayed when pushed.
On the other side of the wire, Spanlink's FastCall Server sends
IVR-collected data to agents. The server also provides for sharing
and transferring call-specific information.
FastCall Agent is compatible with Avaya's Definity G3, Nortel
Meridian One, and Siemens Hicom 300E PBXs, plus Cisco's ICM Peripheral
Gateway. The FastCall Agent Suite starts at $550 per seat for
a 25-seat license. Unit cost drops to $495 per seat for licenses
of 500 seats or more.
Sonant Bringing together ACD, CT middleware, and IVR, Sonant's
(San Diego, CA - 800-929-2920) ClientCall eCenter is a complete
call center application. Running on its own NT server and rigged
with T-1 trunk cards, the software keeps calls from the PBX (and
agents) by automatically performing customer transactions scripted
with eCenter's IVR app generator, ClientCall Script.
If a caller needs to talk to a person, the software directs the
call to the PBX via a direct T-1 trunk connection, placing the
equivalent of a DID (direct inward dial) into your phone system.
Note: Sonant doesn't support TAPI calls from applications, so
outbound calling from PIMs is not possible. Sonant does, however,
provide a programming interface that lets you bring call data
into external applications through OLE, DDE, or DLLs. The outfit
plans to add media control to its middleware. And it will soon
introduce a true soft phone, one that performs call control and
media processing.
Wallboards to the Desktop
CT middleware may bring caller ID to agent desktops, but agents
and managers often learn about the number of calls in queue or
about system problems by looking up from their screens at the
center's wallboards.
Symon Communications, Inc.'s (Dallas, TX - 281-240-5555) NetBrite
is easier than many to install. The third-generation, full-matrix
LED board has a built-in LAN, data jack, and SoundBlaster chipset
for special effects. Once on the network, it boots itself up,
ready to display information and play .WAV files sent by the Symon
2000 Server. The Server integrates with many PBXs (Nortel's, Lucent's,
Siemens', and Ericsson's, among them) and ACDs (Aspect's and Rockwell's),
pulling statistics in and sending data out to NetBrite.
Besides its multiline full-matrix wallboards, Spectrum Corp.
(Houston, TX - 800-392-5050) has Ultra-Link II software, which
collects statistics from ACDs and PBXs. Using its GUI-based program,
managers can define unique metrics based on these statistics.
They can also trigger pagers or color changes on the wallboards
when thresholds are reached. The app includes a browser interface,
enabling on-the-run supervisors to view data remotely.
Call centers that surround agents with high cube walls may need
to supplant wallboards with the virtual kind, which displays call
center stats on agent desktops. Symon has its DeskView; and Spectrum
its Ultra-Link II. So, too, Texas Digital Systems (College Station,
TX - 979-693-9378), which recently released QuickCOM Enterprise
version 2.0. The app sends CC stats to Web pages, agent workstations,
wireless devices, and traditional LED boards. QuickCOM's Message
Manager lets administrators define thresholds in a table interface,
triggering color changes and pager alerts.
Apps, Intelligently Tailored
If you want to make it in the telephony VAR world today, you've
got to customize.
That's what Chuck Garabedian, president of Intelliphone (Andover,
MA - 800-346-5542) will tell you. This interconnect speaks from
experience. Garabedian previously sold NEC phones and voicemail
systems, but changed course a few years back as it became increasingly
difficult to differentiate from other dealers. Garabedian's new
tack: Market customized CT software and comms servers, including
Picazo's VS1 and Artisoft's TeleVantage products.
He hasn't looked back. Garabedian explains that selling apps
he customizes for open comms servers gives him a competitive advantage
over VARs marketing prepackaged apps for proprietary PBXs. “It's
more application selling, instead of going in and delivering phones,
competing on price,” he says.
His staff of four programmers has lots of experience working
with TAPI-based middleware and developing call center applications,
especially for financial services companies. Passing caller ID
to a Windows application is easy to do with a comms server, says
Garabedian. You only need to ensure the vendor-supplied TSP module
is installed. The Windows operating system does the rest, passing
phone numbers to a TAPI-compliant PIM, like ACT.
Residing at the “lower” level of Microsoft's TAPI software
hierarchy, TSPs convert TAPI to device-specific commands, transporting
the commands via a communications link. (Picazo's VS1 uses an
RS-232 cable from the agent's desktop to the server.)
For more complex requirements, Garabedian's team has created
customized ACD applications, including a skills-based router for
banking clients. When a call arrives, the application picks up
the caller ID, dips into a database to retrieve the income level
matching caller's zip code, then routes the call an appropriate
agent. For example, an agent skilled in selling to high-income
people gets the calls from zip codes with homes valued at $500,000-plus.
For a loan department, Intelliphone designed a database-connected
telephony app that routes calls to an agent skilled in the current
phase of the caller's loan application. It makes little sense,
says Garabedian, “to take [callers] back through the ACD
and wait for a mortgage originator if they've already received
credit approval.” The CT application also launches the right
data entry screen so agents can start working as soon as they
go off-hook.
Garabedian is hot on Intel's new Converged Communications Platform
(ICCP). Combining hardware and CT Media middleware from Intel's
Telecommunications and Embedded Group the ICCP can host several
telephony applications at once. CT Media is built on the S.100
standard, which lets multiple applications share media resources
(such as fax, voicemail, and conferencing).
“It's a toolkit that everybody can write to and interoperate
with,” says Garabedian. For Intelliphone and other VARs,
he adds, building a custom solution is as easy as purchasing software
modules from ISVs that develop for CT Media, then loading the
modules onto the ICCP.
By integrating varied third-party apps, ICCP and CT Media, says
Garabedian, let him “pick the best of each feature group.”
Prior to CT Media and the ICCP, he adds, VARS deployed separate
servers running single function applications, hoping they would
all work together as a single system.
CT Media's other advantage: It saves VARs development time. VARs
can buy - instead of programming from scratch - voicemail, PBX,
or other telephony functions. To glue it all together, Intelliphone
programmers work with CT Media's software development kit (SDK).
Garabedian believes a developer who knows Visual Basic can get
up to speed quickly and use the SDK to tweak the modules. Though
working with the same software and hardware, VARs can create unique
applications for clients.
“As originally an interconnect, and now more like a converged
communications VAR, we can set ourselves apart in certain vertical
markets,” says Garabedian.
Intel's CT Media Value
Network
The CT Media Value Network of Intel's Telecommunications and
Embedded Group (TEG, formerly Dialogic) is a collaborative community
of companies providing standards-based applications, platforms,
peripherals, services, and sales channels based on TEG's CT Media
server software. The application categories and companies include:
Ambell Artisoft Inc. BBX Technologies, LLC Brooktrout Software
CTL Elix - Office Telephony Envox Intersis Novavox Sound Advantage
Black Ice Rainbow Onset Optus System Solutions
Artisoft, Inc.
Elix Interactive Northwest Sound Advantage
Ambell Coactive Systems Elix TriVium Webversa
- Call Reporting and Administration
Gallery Telecom Solution
