November 1999

BY KEVIN MAYER

What’s in a name? A rose might smell as sweet, but what if you were to include all the flowers in your garden under the category of rose? People would have a very limited idea of what you actually grew.

We've found that our readers sometimes have had a similarly limited view of what it is that our magazine covers. CTI is a broad term meant to encompass all the ways in which voice and data come together, but, for many people, it instead has assumed a limited (and dated) meaning.

Come January 2000, we celebrate a new name that more accurately reflects the breadth of our coverage: Communications Solutions™. Well, what was wrong with the old name, you ask? Here are some of the misconceptions we often run into as CTI, and some of the reasons we are confident that Communications Solutions™ will better represent us to you, and allow us to better represent your interests as well.

CTI You mean the proprietary link between a big, old PBX and a big, old mainframe?
Historically, CTI really did refer to exactly this link. Over the years, we’ve generalized the term, applying it to all kinds of integration between computer and telephony systems, and to all manner of voice and data integration. And while our use of CTI or computer telephony has carried the day in many quarters, some misconceptions persist, and new ones occasionally arise. The new name doesn’t suggest we have anything in particular to do with mainframe-era solutions. Certainly, it doesn’t limit us to mainframes.

Oh, yeah, CTI. That’s like, uh, screen pops, right?
Well, not exactly. The screen pop was the first or second CTI application, and was mainly associated with call centers. Since the early 1980s, however, the coordination of real-time voice events and database-related events has grown more sophisticated. You’ve got follow-me schemes, workforce management, real-time data feeds, all kinds of dynamic routing schemes, and even CRM. The problem is, CTI seems (for many people) to be forever frozen in the screen pop past, back when Rockwell added the feature to the Galaxy ACD. Fortunately, Communications Solutions™ isn’t mired in the past.

Hey, I know what CTI is — CTI is the PC-as-phone!
Well, not exactly. The much-hyped idea is that the PC’s GUI is just great as a means to replace the overly complicated and hard-to-use desktop phone. But people like their desktop phones — otherwise, why would be seeing all these IP phones popping up all over the place? Does that mean the graphic user interface is useless? Not at all. GUIs provide consolidated views of disparate data sources — unified messaging windows, for example. Again, changing our name frees us from those perceived limitations and suggests more readily our broad coverage of the industry.

CTI? That’s just for call centers!
No, on at least two counts. One, CTI also covers all kinds of business phone systems, not just the ones optimized and elaborated for call center applications. Two, we’re not talking about “call” centers anymore, but “contact” centers, designed to accommodate customers regardless of any customer’s preferred communications medium — traditional voice, IP voice, Web chat, e-mail, etc. Whatever the medium, the same rules, the same intelligence, the same coordination may apply. We can let people associate CTI with call centers, if they will. We can instead concentrate on letting Communications Solutions™ encompass contact centers.

CTI — the same old customer premises play. A little dated, isn’t it?
Anyone who would express this thought would automatically assume CTI had nothing to do with the potential for accessing novel voice/data services through service providers. Under the banner of Communications Solutions™, all sorts of interesting possibilities open up, including coverage of whole new classes of equipment, such as integrated access devices (IADs) and edge access devices.

Where do we go from here?
We’ve always been in the forefront to show how telephony systems have evolved to emulate the approaches pioneered in data communications, and how data communications is gearing up to accommodate voice and data traffic, via QoS and policy management provisions. Communications Solutions™ will continue to offer the same incisive coverage that you’ve come to expect from CTI.

And we’ll continue to help you keep an eye on current developments and industry trends — for example, the proliferation of access devices and the waning role of the PC. What might displace PCs? Wireless handheld devices. Set-top boxes. And goodness knows what sorts of embedded or custom or specialized applications.

The point is, we can more easily position Communications Solutions™ as the magazine that covers these trends. What does the future hold? Keep your eye on this space.