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In a perfect world, youd end up with every communications device known to man assigned to you going to one super-mailbox so you wouldnt have to look like an ber-geek carrying a wide assortment of devices in virtual-office mode. You know the type someone who carries an electronic utility belt with hip-packs for batteries, maybe a hundred pounds of pagers, cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), a portable computer and/or fax machine, wrist-communicators, earplugs connected to virtual-reality glasses, and perhaps all tied into a system using the human body for power and always-on communications. Yeah, a real Borg from Star Trek or an antennae-carrying My Favorite Martian. Heaven help em if lightening strikes!
Well, maybe you dont want to really look like that or to carry around a portable office, yet you want to stay in contact and keep abreast of everything. Maybe you just want to walk up to a kiosk and do your communicating there using a unified messaging system designed the way you need to use it. Perhaps youre looking for a system that allows you to communicate anywhere, anytime, using whatever media you happen to be walking around with and using only one personal ID and password. Can anything be done to keep us from looking like a safety poster image from OSHA? Well, yes, and it has been around for a while. It just took us a bit of time to get around to testing it to our satisfaction. Centrinity makes it and calls it FirstClass Communications Platform Business & Education Editions.
Communications ASP gave this package a 2001 Product of the Year Award and Centrinity also received the
Best of Show Award at the Spring Communications Solutions Expo. Just so you know, the FirstClass name has been around since 1990 when the application was used on the Macintosh platform, then migrated to the Windows environment, and then was seen once again at the MacWorld Expo in New York City in July. The name of the company changed however (Centrinity bought SoftArc in 1999). What caught our eye was the Internet telephony application that is included in this system, and the fact that the whole system is almost platform agnostic. Almost. What weve learned over time is that there is a real difference between integrated messaging, unified messaging (UM), and unified communications (UC). Integrated messaging can be considered an interim solution that allows for simultaneous operation and coexistence with other messaging systems requiring multiple inboxes, multiple directories, and lots of message storage for each user of the system. Parts and pieces of these have existed for over 20 years and it is a real bear to make them all work nicely together. Weve converged that into UM, but UM doesnt scale well. A UC system, however, consists of a single mailbox capable of handling multimode messages from multiple client devices (run your personal list here, or think Borg), a single server level message store with unified administration connected to a single directory enabling information management for all users. Wow! What a mouthful that is. But wait, that isnt all. It also must be reliable, interface with legacy gear, and include device-independent accessibility that provides real-time connection to the original caller during voice playback. Got that? Oh, and it must permit unique customer greeting capability for each of those myriad devices and scale nicely as well. Do you think something like that would really promote employee efficiency by enabling them to spend more time on revenue-producing tasks instead of babysitting personal messages from a plethora of electronic communications devices? Yeah, maybe so. If it really works, then this is way cool. INSTALLATION
You may have noticed that there are two modes of installation listed as pricing models. One is the tried-and-true stand-alone server or licensing mode. This requires that you license the product and server from Centrinity and then train an employee to manage the device at your location. When you visit Centrinitys Web site, you can find a whole page dedicated to both classroom-style training or online training courses that can run anywhere from $500 to $7,000 each and last from a few days to 30-plus. They warn you that the online courses are not for the faint of heart, and require a modicum of commitment (okay, a burning desire) and lots of personal off-site time to complete. The hardware required to house the FirstClass Communications Platform is either a PC or a Mac in the following configurations: Server
A PC with an 80486 processor or faster, with either Windows NT Server 3.51 with service pack 5 or higher or Windows 2000, eight MB of RAM plus 100 KB for each concurrent session, and 14 MB of hard-disk space. Or a PowerPC Mac with OS 8.1 or higher, 16 MB of RAM plus 100 KB for each concurrent session, 14 MB of hard-disk space, and Open Transport 1.3 or higher. That fulfills the server side of the requirements, and a minimum of a modem connection is required for Internet access. You can see that it doesnt really require a whole lot of horsepower to move this package. Client
A PC with a 486 or faster processor with Windows NT Server 3.51 with service pack 5 or higher, four MB of RAM, and eight MB of hard-disk space. Or a PowerPC Mac running OS 8.1 or higher, with eight MB of RAM, and eight MB of hard-disk space. Open Transport 1.3 or higher is also required. It doesnt really matter where these machines are located because connectivity is done over the Internet. The other option (which we took) is to allow Centrinity to host the service (ASP hosting model) and just assign us an ID and password while handling the behind-the-scenes issues themselves. This entailed three separate e-mails from them assigning numbers for both voice and data and including an e-mail address. The third setup message detailed the minutiae for phone messaging, explaining such services as Call Forward No Answer, Call Forward Busy, Calling Line ID, and Dialed Number Identification Service through a
Sprint Canada voice mailbox, an access phone number, and also a direct inward dial assignment. Instructions on how to do cell phone call forwarding were also given. Most importantly, they gave us the Centrinity Customer Care number for service if anything didnt work correctly. But that never happens, right? Lets just say we put it to good use a couple of times. Overall, the service is almost plug and play. The version of FirstClass Communications Platform Business & Education Editions for the classroom ties into the Collaborative Learning Resource Center at
www.sharedlearning.net. Many training environments are using it, so check it out. DOCUMENTATION
If you wish, you may download PDF files for everything from a 27-page Quick Reference Guide, a 140-page First Class Intranet Server (FCIS) Customization Guide, a 185-page Admin Guide that includes a section on security, or a 400-page Admin Reference Guide that includes extensive troubleshooting in Appendix B. You have your choice of reading this in English, French, German, Italian, or Spanish. Of course, if you decide to go with the ASP-based model, then most of this really doesnt matter except for the Quick Reference Guide because it shows tables for both Windows and Macintosh environments on how to use keyboard shortcuts for efficiency. OPERATIONAL TESTING
If you really want to roll up your sleeves and get into the code for this package, you may do so by downloading free toolkits into your favorite programming editor for client extensions, database extensions, or gateways to other communications services, whether it be Borland 5, Microsoft C++, or for the Mac CodeWarrior Pro. Integrated with the FirstClass Communications Platform is a Rapid Application Development package that allows access to other database applications and online information systems as well as allowing road warrior types access to the FirstClass Communications Platform database system. Or you can follow our lead and pretend the technology is invisible and not worry too much about it. Are you ready for some techno-geek acronyms? The protocols used by FCIS allow connectivity with everything from VT100 terminals to WAP/WML access, PDA synchronization, external SMTP and FTP, network news transport protocol (NNTP) gateways, support for POP3, IMAP, and LDAP, and conferencing applications. The efficiency and carrier-class scalability of the system are shown in Figure 2. The FirstClass platform was designed to create new CPU processes through the Collaborative Store message store, based on functional activity rather than on users types of activities. This means that instead of creating multiple user-specific processes, only to have most relegated to a wait state, a single process managing all users is created for each function. This places less demand on the OS and CPU for each setup/breakdown transaction, enabling more concurrent users rather than the typical CPU limit of 400 users per server using the standard of creating a new process for each user. Thousands of accounts can be running on just one box! This is accomplished through a file system based on a collaborative store using a flat-file system for message storage instead of following traditional database designs of input into fields that dont change much and are hard-drive-intensive when they do need updating. If youve ever messed around with database design, the way Centrinity got around this bottleneck is also way cool. The other components are the Secure Extensible Directory and the Automated Group Management modules. These, along with the Collaborative Store, work at the kernel level of the processor. They interact with both the Platform Conduit Layer and the Abstract Protocol Layer to perform the agnostic platform magic that interfaces with the Client Layer at the user end of this package.Centrinity calls this a Holistic System, one that can be manipulated (extended) at each layer without disturbing the other layers in the process. Others might call this a kind of modular design. For capacity-planning purposes, check this out:
Windows NT
2,00050,000 users per server, depending on traffic; up to 1,000 concurrent connections; and 10,000 conferences, mail lists, or Internet newsgroups per server. Mac OS
Up to 50,000 users per server, depending on traffic; up to 250 concurrent connections (for Mac OS 9); and 50,000 conferences, mail lists, or Internet newsgroups per server.
Server capacities and features are obviously influenced by CPU speed and disk space, but did you pay attention to the minimum platform requirements for those units? Drag out the old gear and put it back into service! If not, then just purchase the hosting plan. Faster than you can blink for messaging? Well, okay, that seems to be sounding a lot like market-speak, but you know what? Messaging and calls do come through fairly quickly, especially when the IP Notifier is being used and you dont have to be logged in to the server to get the messages either. The e-mails we initially got were rather terse about what to do with the ID info, so we had to call Tech Support to figure out what it all meant. Tech Support is 24x5, so call during the regular work week anytime. The automated customer care line is 24x7, and expect a response within a 24-hour period. On the client side, once we got the ID and password figured out, we discovered that we couldnt just use the login link off the front page of
centrinity.com. Rather, we had to go to centrinity-asp.firstclass.com to make it work. By the end of September the items we found on the various Web pages that werent quite up to spec should have been fixed. What is really neat is that
you can see how all forms of communication media can end up in one location. For e-mail accounts, that is done in one of two ways. You can either Forward your mail to your FirstClass account, or you can supply Centrinity with the following information, and they will add it to your account: Your FC UserID; mail server address or host name where the mail is to be pulled (POP3) from; your ID on that server;
your password on that server; and e-mail address for that server. For example, lets say my name is Robert, so: User ID Robert
Mail Server address wxontario.com
ID on that server robert
Password on that server robertspassword
E-mail address [email protected] You get the idea. Not too difficult, is it? You probably have multiple accounts or you wouldnt be reading this review, right? Isnt it nice to see how things can come together? On the voice side, we discovered that the rather long ID wasnt the name given, but the phone number we gave them (all 10 digits) was the ID and it cant be spoken, it has to be keyed in. It was easier to just pull it up on the Web, especially the fax pages (where is the start button on a phone?) Also on the voice side, for UM there is information online about PBX switch interfacing. That requires Brooktrout cards and a Windows box with Windows NT, 128 MB of RAM, a 10 GB hard disk, and depending on how many folks you want to support on your stand-alone system, a Pentium-class processor, and a PCI or a couple of ICA slots. For the Mac side of things, either a Windows NT machine can be configured to interface with client machines or they can be hooked up to any Mac server running FirstClass Intranet Server or FirstClass Collaborative. Or, you can simply let Centrinity host the services. Oh, and we should mention that this package also performs auto-attendant processes with a folder for greetings, etc. Training consisted of reading the Quick Reference Guides for FCIS as far as the client side of things was concerned. Wed rather see an online walk-through. And yes, they do have a $20 CD for sale for training purposes. No, we didnt get that, but you can if you think you need it. One of the platforms we used for testing purposes was a Series D lime-colored iMac that has 256 MB of RAM using OS 9.2.1 and OS X. The other was a portable Pentium Class Gateway with 128 MB of RAM. The other items were handsets of various kinds. Everything worked fine once we got past the ID and password snafus. We are not proponents of being Borged to death by loading a body down with multi-communications devices and looking like Inspector Gadget. If a universal communicator can be found, wed be happy. Meanwhile, this looks like about the nearest thing to being there since only one or two devices need to be used in road warrior mode for always-on communications. ROOM FOR
IMPROVEMENT
Maybe the phone access ID could be changed to include VoiceXML technology so the not-so-obvious punch in the numbers routine doesnt have to be done with a phone set. How quickly we humans adapt to new technology! The Web page leftovers from the previous company name legacies will be changed by the time you read this. Actually, the whole Web site is going to get a makeover, so the screen images shown here may not be what you see in the near future. An online QuickTime movie for a walkthrough of this system would be nice for training purposes instead of expecting us to buy the $20 CD or bothering the technical support staff with otherwise silly questions or logging in to search for the Help folders. Dealing with various and sundry operating systems and platforms for compatibility can be a real pain in the you-know-what, but the technical staff at Centrinity are doing a wonderful job trying to keep up with the new stuff and making those things work seamlessly with the First Class Communications Platform. They will continue to do everything possible to make things like e-mail attachments work properly. Even with beta operating systems. Thats just part of the job for those who do 24x5 support. Centrinity does have plans to deploy clients this Fall for both UNIX Solaris and Mac OS X systems to flesh out the it doesnt matter which platform agnosticism. CONCLUSION
Honestly, this package rocks, and we have decided to honor it with our Editors Choice Award. FirstClass Communications Platform Business & Education Editions brings together a lot of what weve been calling convergence items and Centrinity has been doing it for a long time. The telecom engineers that designed this program are, for the most part, still with the company after 10+ years. Theyve managed to stabilize the wobbly three-legged stool of reliability, scalability, and security while providing a one-stop-does-it-all shop for anywhere, anytime, with-any-communications-device access. And theyve done it without the technology being in your face or limited to just one platform. And theyve successfully sold a lot of product, according to their case studies. Isnt that what weve all been striving for?
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