August 2000

Staying On Top

BY Tom Keating

Sure, I could read the magazines and press kits all at once and knock down the magazine/press kit tower from six feet high to just a few inches. But what fun would that be? I wouldn't enjoy having an artificial wall, and I couldn't enjoy playing "Jenga" when I have to pull something from the middle of the pile while trying to keep the entire stack from collapsing.

JUST NOT ENOUGH
Even reading nearly every technology magazine out there doesn't allow me to stay on top of things in the rapidly-changing communications space. To round out my education, I travel to important technology trade shows to see demos and meet with vendors. However, if I traveled to every trade show relevant to communications, such as call center shows, networking shows, or Internet telephony shows, I'd never be in the office. That means I would never have time to write this column! Kidding aside, because I am not able to travel to every trade show, I often invite vendors to visit TMC to show off their latest wares.

Of course, vendors also call to request a meeting with myself or another TMC editorial staff member. Sometimes vendors just invite themselves and show up at our door! I kid you not -- it has happened on at least one occasion. (We gave them the same friendly TMC welcome we give all our visitors, even though they weren't invited, but please don't take this as an open invitation to just show up at our doorstep!)

In any event, with all the vendor visits I have each month, I like to make the vendor feel like the trip was worthwhile. I make a point to try and ensure any important news makes it into the news section of the magazine. Unfortunately, the news section has limited space and sometimes the news is just too important to throw in with the rest of the press releases. As such, I've decided to write about some of the more interesting visits I've had from various vendors.

SCORCHINGLY FAST FIREWALL
Cisco is dead. That's right, you read correctly. Well, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but give me a chance to explain my bold statement. After meeting with Aravox Technologies, I was very impressed with their new, innovative approach to designing and implementing a firewall. Aravox combines a unique Packet Control Language with hardware acceleration to deliver high packet throughput and low latency. They claim that this resolves the performance bottleneck imposed by conventional firewalls and software-only approaches.

Utilizing a CompactPCI chassis, the Aravox SP5000 Firewall currently operates at "wire speed," analyzing each and every packet on a 100BaseT network. Aravox's Craig Warren stated, "Companies are seeing the need to leave the network open and firewalls are obtrusive to an 'open network,' plus firewalls add latency which is bad for voice over IP applications."

H.323, for example, uses a range of ports that must be opened on the firewall, which many system administrators are unwilling to do -- for fear of hackers.

He also noted that traditional application proxy firewalls are cumbersome to manage and are inhibiting users from fully utilizing network applications, such as application sharing, instant messaging, video, and VoIP. Finally, he told me that companies are leaning away from blocking applications at the firewall, and instead are looking for an "open network" with intrusion detection devices to defend against hackers.

DEATH TO CISCO, LONG LIVE CISCO
I joked that Cisco is dead, but Aravox isn't really going after Cisco's enterprise firewall market. Instead, since Aravox is focused on Internet telephony and hosted CTI applications, they are targeting CLECs, ILECs, ISPs, and ASPs in particular. ASPs are a perfect market for Aravox since ASPs require some sort of "openness" within their network in order to allow customers to access the applications, but they also require security if they want to keep their customers or attract new ones.

The Aravox SP5000 Firewall solution can integrate with an existing VoIP architecture. Your VoIP gateway controls the Aravox SP5000 Firewall through a simple, integrated applications programming interface (API). The SP5000 scales with the demand for IP telephony services, supporting up to three VoIP gateways. Each of the Aravox SP5000 Firewall network interconnects (NICs) is independent from other NICs in the system, and can provide an interface to a separate Internet router -- alternative paths, for improved reliability. I should also point out that Aravox's product is protocol agnostic, so whether you are using H.323, SIP, or any other protocol, this firewall can protect you from intruders.

In fact, Aravox Technologies has agreed to provide security on dynamicsoft's Internet telephony servers, which are utilizing SIP.

"This is the first case where a SIP server is incorporating security in its solution," said Stephen Fischer, co-founder of Aravox. In my opinion, Aravox's ability to let a communications device such as a "softswitch" control the opening and controlling/closing of firewall ports is a critical advantage that Aravox has over traditional firewalls (such as Cisco), which are much more static in nature. In fact, Aravox has nicknamed their product a "streaming media firewall" or better yet, a "dynamic firewall."

YOU COULDN'T SCRIPT THIS BETTER
SynTelate is a scripting/workflow software "app-gen like" product designed for small to mid-sized informal call centers. Utilizing this product you can create inbound scripts, outbound campaigns, and customize your own screens with data fields from various database sources. They gave a demonstration in our office and I was quite impressed with the product. You simply design a script on your computer screen by using a toolbox and easy drag and drop methods. Often IT staff or programmers are responsible for maintaining and designing call flow scripts for their call center.

From the demonstration that I saw, I believe that with a little practice an end user, such as a call center manager, can design original scripts, outbound call campaigns, etc. One key advantage to this product is that the screen designs are all held in your database, thus your campaigns can be run immediately by your agents and do not require compiling and distribution.

synTelate has new Web features to enable the contact center agent to simultaneously synchronize customer/agent computer screens and have access to customer databases. In addition to e-mail, chat, and call back buttons, the new Web-enabled synTelate allows for voice and video over IP, collaborative form filling, and push/pull pages, making customer contact over the Web an interactive experience. SynTelate is an excellent product that I highly recommend checking out. Also, look for an in-depth review of this product in TMC Labs in a future issue.

HEY COACH!
Training within many call centers is often an afterthought. An agent is hired, told "Here's your desk and your phone" and that's it -- the agent is a babe in the woods. In some cases, instructor-led training does occur, but unfortunately this is not common. Call center managers cannot justify taking agents away from their desks on a regular basis. Besides, with a high turnover rate in call centers, the agent you trained this week could be gone next week or next month. Certainly, formalized training isn't cheap and could be a waste of money in such a high-turnover industry, so what is a company to do?

Corporations are starting to realize the importance of good customer service and the need for consistent and inexpensive training of their call center agents. As such, companies such as Envision Telephony have answered the call with their SoundByte Enterprise quality monitoring product suite. This product records the agent-customer interactions, including the voice portion of the call as well as capturing the agent's screen, including mouse movements, mouse clicks, and keystrokes. This information is stored and can be played back by the supervisor with CD-style playback controls for quality monitoring, as well as for training purposes.

Envision Telephony came to our offices to demonstrate the newest addition to their product suite -- Click2Coach. Click2Coach allows supervisors to coach agents in their seats, send evaluations, training, and feedback to agents without taking them away from customers. A supervisor can voice-annotate the recording of an agent's interaction with a customer to point out the good things the agent did and provide suggestions to what the agent could have done better. I'm not easily impressed, but certainly Envision Telephony's SoundByte Enterprise with their new Click2Coach module was very impressive. I encourage call center managers or technology decision makers within a call center to check out this product.

Certainly, I must have excluded dozens of vendors that have visited myself or other TMC editorial staff in recent months, and if so, I apologize. It's entirely possible your press kit is buried somewhere in my wall of reading material. Trust me, I'll get to it eventually. Jenga! 

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