SOA/Web Services

Many companies decide to purchase a VoIP solution as a tactical move—a way to save some money or just have the latest and best technology. Best-in-class firms, though, tend to approach VoIP as more of a strategic move—a long-term investment made with a lot of thought into how the capabilities of IP telephony can change and improve business processes.

 

Greg Pisano, director of market development at BlueNote Networks (News - Alert) certainly thinks VoIP should be a strategic, and not a tactical, move for any company.

 

“If a company is going to make an investment in VoIP, moving away from a siloed approach to communications and IT infrastructures, that company should be thinking about how it can leverage the new technology to the fullest,” Pisano told TMCnet.

 

Leveraging VoIP to its fullest means considering things like unified communications, communications-enabled business processes, reusable Web services supporting multiple applications simultaneously, mobile integration, and even ‘green’ initiatives, Pisano said.

 

The ability of employees to seamlessly access the corporate communications system, regardless of location or device being used, for example, can be part of a green initiative and a way to boost efficiency. It also can be part of disaster preparedness, since leveraging the resiliency of an IP network can ensure a natural or man-made disaster doesn’t impact the operation of an organization.

 

 

One of the greatest strengths of VoIP technology is its ability to create a common infrastructure for voice, data and video services, rather than having these applications be “islands” unto themselves.

 

This integration, Pisano said, creates a foundation from which it is possible to build new types of applications that are more sophisticated than was ever possible in the days when PBXs and IT application infrastructures were completely separate. This is where the concept of unified communications comes from—blending together voice, voicemail, e-mail, presence, conferencing and messaging.

 

The new tools that VoIP systems enable, Pisano emphasized, allow companies to combine interactive communications with business processes, resulting in a more efficient and competitive company.

 

 

Pisano told TMCnet that some companies are still investing in VoIP first and foremost as a way to save money on toll charges by leveraging the economics of Internet telephony. One example is Seaport Hotel in Boston which recently picked one of BlueNote’s SessionSuite solutions as a way provide Web-based click-to-call capabilities in its rooms. Because VoIP is such an affordable way to provide voice, the hotel is offering this as a complimentary service to its customers.

 

Enterprises, Pisano said, can leverage IP infrastructure in the same way to deliver low-cost voice capabilities to employees.

 

But VoIP is more than just about saving money in the short term, Pisano emphasized. It’s also a technology companies can use as part of their long-term strategies to be more efficient, more nimble, more competitive. Which, of course, ultimately has a positive effect on the bottom line.

 

“It’s true that by replacing a TDM-based PBX, a company will gain some value through lower-cost calling capabilities,” Pisano said.  “But that’s a technology replacement, which to me is very tactical in nature.”

 

 

With the integration capabilities of VoIP, voice takes on a whole new role for enterprises.

 

“Application integration is key,” Pisano said. “This means being able to treat voice as yet another IP application. That opens the door to applications like voice-enabled Web sites.”

 

Beyond mere application integration, VoIP enables voice to be used in new and innovative ways, such as in a call center setting to route calls more intelligently and to attach contextual information to voice calls.

 

For example, a customer logged into an account on a banking Web site might see an offer for a special loan rate, and then use a click-to-call button the site to contact a call center agent. Because contextual information can be attached to the call, the agent would receive a screen of information about the caller.

 

“This really helps with customer satisfaction; being able to serve customers better and more efficiently,” Pisano said.

 

In the financial services sector, a company might used presence-enabled routing—another function of voice integrated with contextual information—to automatically and intelligently distribute calls to the most appropriate people based on preset criteria.

 

Being able to treat voice as a reusable Web service in this way is a vast departure, and a vast improvement, from the more traditional method of tying together applications through computer telephony integration (CTI) interfaces. That’s because CTI (News - Alert) interfaces require developers to know a lot about how telephony systems work. But, voice as a Web service abstracts that complexity, greatly simplifying the development process.

 

“Now you can have Web developers integrate voice into applications and they really don't need to know anything about how the telephony system works,” Pisano explained. “In the long run, that saves development time—and whenever you save development time, that’s a direct savings to your operating expenses.”

 

 

BlueNote offers a family of VoIP-based products, under the brand SessionSuite. These solutions enable enterprises to integrate real-time, interactive communications with IT business applications and processes. This is done in such a way as to leverage existing infrastructure resources.

 

“SessionSuite is not a rip-and-replace solution,” Pisano stressed. “We help customers to migrate and evolve so that, as they head down the VoIP path, we can complement, modernize and extend the capabilities of an existing PBX (News - Alert). This means a company can start to implement VoIP without any operational disruption.”

 

Pisano used Seaport Hotel again as an example of this migration process, because the hotel retained its Nortel (News - Alert) Meridian PBX. The click-to-call capabilities in rooms on touchscreen monitors connect to the Nortel PBX.

 

Another example of an organization using BlueNote’s solution because of it enables a smooth migration to VoIP is Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. This institution initially used SessionSuite to deploy a click-to-call help desk for its roughly 40,000 students. Eventually, this service will evolve to include a student Web portal that’s voice-enabled, so students can communicate with faculty and staff, and make external calls, directly from the portal.

 

Concordia University also plans to build into the portal outbound notification capabilities so that, for example, students can be reminded of overdue library books. Outbound notification, Pisano noted, can be used in many different industries—such as a pharmacy letting patients know they need to refill their prescriptions, a transportation logistics company distributing delivery information, or an airport updating passenger of flight scheduling changes.

 

Pisano pointed out that SessionSuite is a completely software-based solution, built on the industry standard SIP protocol. The Web services APIs are SOAP and XML-based. That means IT staff who are familiar with the Web development model can use SessionSuite to build the type of voice applications discussed in this article.

 

BlueNote’s mission is to create solutions that solve real-world business problems. Companies are coming to appreciate VoIP’s ability to do just that—solve problems.

 

“Companies are really starting to understand and embrace unified communications, Web services, and telephony-enabled business processes,” Pisano said. “VoIP is not just about replacing old technology with new technology, but about opening up a whole new world of application integration, mobility, business continuity and Web-based applications.”

 

 

SOA/WEB SERVICES