What's the hold-up on CT?

The Computer Telephony (CT) industry, once known for its bewilderingonly now that Computer Telephony companies are getting their act together? David McCormack reports. array of proprietary interfaces and protocols, has finally reached a significant crossroads with the adoption of open standards. The industry is naturally hoping that this interoperability will help reach new markets that were previously put off by the immaturity of prehistoric proprietary standards.

As businesses increasingly search for any means of achieving competitive advantage, tying the raw power of the computer with the ubiquitous nature of the telephone is an attractive option.

The CT industry currently finds itself in a similar position to that faced by the corporate computing industry 15 years ago. For the same price as users were previously getting proprietary equipment, they are now getting more powerful hardware and software based on open standards. At the same time, these new standards are increasing the usefulness of the technology to corporates.

In part the CT industry was being held back by its parentage - the PBX and telecoms industries. "The PBX industry is a disgrace," said Harry Newton, widely acclaimed as the founder of the CT industry, at this year's CT Expo show.

According to Newton, the development of standards will make CT a very powerful tool for building networks. "You can now build systems in two or three months that Northern Telecom or Lucent took 20 years to build," he said. "Network managers should focus on using voice as a competitive edge for their company."

What had been missing was a common set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), which enable software developers to write applications that can control and interact with the CT hardware. Once this set of interfaces is in place, software houses can begin to build middleware hooks that tie various applications together to create a unified call processing environment on a single platform.

In March 1996, the Enterprise Computer Telephony Forum (ECTF), the CT industry's main body, announced the ECTF S.100 agreement, which defined a client/server model and a set of APIs that would enable applications to be portable across different call-processing and PBX hardware. Since then, CT developers have been working on products based on this standard as well as call control APIs such as Microsoft's Telephone Application Programming Interface (TAPI).

Heading for the mainstream

As a result, CT is now moving into the IT mainstream, with standards such as ECTF S.100 and TAPI helping to unify the industry. These new standards mean that CT applications can function within the Windows client/server environment. This has led to the development of client/server telephony and the ability to integrate communications with information processing, which in turn is leading to the development of a new class of integrated business applications.

"The future of telecommunications depends on moving to an open systems model like that defined by the ECTF," said Safwat Farag, VP of engineering for Ericsson. "Our latest products can easily be enhanced with new services from independent software vendors."

New products are emerging that harness the power of this technology convergence. At the recent Voice Europe exhibition, Microsoft and Dialogic co-hosted a showcase of next-generation computer telephony systems built around Dialogic's Windows NT-based CT Media technology.

CT Media is a resource management software tool that makes it possible for multiple applications developed using standard APIs, such as ECTF S.100 and TAPI, to share a common CT server. Additionally, CT Media provides an open interface to H.100-compliant products, allowing new hardware to be added to the server without the need to change existing applications.

The showcase featured practical demonstrations of next-generation open communications systems such as PC-based call centres, interactive voice response systems and simple application generators.

Companies involved in the exhibition included Compaq, Rockwell, Ericsson, Deutsche Telekom and Philips. The message these influential vendors were preaching was that open standards are the enabling technology for a new breed of powerful communication servers.

"The CT Server means that telephony applications can transparently share a common pool of CT resources that exist within an open system built from best-of-breed components," said Howard Bubb, CEO of Dialogic. "This almost exactly parallels how data-driven applications transparently share data resources on a database server."

Not surprisingly, Microsoft, which is fighting to establish NT as the number one platform for CT software systems, echoed Bubb's view:

"NT-based elements such as Dialogic's CT Media software and open multivendor CT components are enabling third-party developers to produce exciting applications that fulfil the promise of CT," said Stephen McBride, a Microsoft spokesperson.

The future is client/server technology

But open standards are set to change the whole direction of the CT industry.

They will force CT companies to divorce themselves from the hardware business.

There is already widespread agreement from major telecom manufacturers that things must change.

"The writing is on the wall," said Michael Durrant, senior manager at Nortel. "We're moving towards a future based on client/server technologies, and if you want to be around in10 years you must move towards this model."

End users who have grown accustomed to relying on a single telecom system vendor for complete end-to-end solutions are beginning to be a bit more choosy, selecting the best applications and integrating a solution to match their needs.

"I see the CT market growing at around 40 per cent per year," said Ron Charnock, chairman of the MultiMedia Telecoms Association.

"But there is significantly more growth to come," he added. "CT vendors need to hone in more on customer requirements and develop bespoke solutions and vertical marketing applications that more closely match their needs.

"It's companies such as Nortel and Lucent that will provide impetus to the market. If and when they start to produce PC-based CT servers using industry standards and push them through their well established channels, then the CT industry will really take off."

And when the industry does take off, it is likely to be more akin to a rocket blast than a crawling old bi-plane. Datamonitor predicts that the European CT market will grow at an astonishing average annual rate of 55 per cent between 1997 and 2002, with a potential of almost 9,000 call centre sites by 2002.

Next year will see a continued explosion in CT technology driven by forces such as deregulation and the emergence of VoIP as a common platform. The result will be tremendous opportunities for innovative voice and data applications so that eventually all telecoms systems will be computer integrated.

According to CT guru Newton, integrated technology will create an environment where "everyone in the company is working in a call centre".

Newton predicts that in the future, unified messaging systems will record voice conversations that can be transcribed into any format, and international telephone calls will cost less than 1p a minute.

This might seem pie in the sky, but look at the difference between the word processing orientated PC of 15 years ago and the internet-connected, groupware monster that it is today.

WEMBLEY INTERNATIONAL: Saving a packet with interactive voice response

In March, Wembley International became the first company to roll out a state-of-the-art call centre based on Microsoft's TAPI standard.

Previously, Wembley International had relied on an outsourced system, but the decision was made to gain greater control of the box office operation.

To this end, they called in the help of Bull Information Systems and switch vendor Invade. The companies were asked to build a solution based on Windows NT server and Invade's Virtual PBX.

"The Bull solution was not the safe choice when you consider it's the first technical solution of its kind," said Andrew Spencer, general manager of Wembley International.

With substantial experience of call centre and ticketing management, Wembley International had very definite specifications for what it wanted from its in-house facility. The three key areas where it felt it could reap most rewards were:

- having an integrated solution;

- having an open solution that would allow easy and cost-effective scalability;

- Interactive Voice Response (IVR) for increased automation.

"When tickets went on sale for the Spice Girls concert, there was a call per second for the first hour of the day. The IVR system was critical and has probably paid for itself already after just six months," said Spencer.

The IVR system enables calls to be processed to completion without the need for a human operator. Implementing it in conjunction with Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) and a sophisticated Management Information System (MIS) allows Wembley International to optimise the efficiency of its call centre agents.

"We wanted a single, complete solution that could integrate with our self-developed ticketing software and give us the independence to expand our capacity in line with our business," said Spencer. "In addition, we wanted the entire package to be visual, easy to use and based on open architecture so that it would be future-proof and scalable."

In order to give Wembley International the most modular and open solution, Bull used off-the-self components wherever possible and developed the application software in standard development languages such as C++ and Visual Basic. As a consequence, the call centre is both flexible and scalable.

"The call centre currently supports 120 lines and can incorporate considerable expansion. We expect volumes to more than double in the next three years," said Spencer.

In fact, the implementation at Wembley has proved so successful that Wembley International now acts as a reseller for the Bull-designed system, marketing it with the Wembley Ticketing System as a complete solution. The call centre solution implemented at Wembley International has been developed in such a way that it is flexible enough to be adapted for different organisations and industries.