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SOA/WEB SERVICES FEATURE ARTICLES


January 07, 2008

Business Communications Platforms Deliver True Convergence

By Alan Rosenberg, BlueNote Networks


For years now vendors have been touting convergence as one of the primary motivators for moving to VoIP. But for the most part, enterprises have enjoyed only nominal benefits from combining their voice and data networks. That’s because, in general, convergence has occurred only at the wire level. Enterprises run voice and data over the same physical cabling plant or over the same wide area network, but otherwise they operate their voice networks, data networks and IT infrastructures independently.

 
In most enterprises, the voice world and the IT world remain independent islands of automation, hosted on autonomous platforms, operated by separate staffs.  Voice services are usually run on proprietary PBXs using vendor-specific provisioning and management interfaces. IT applications tend to be hosted on industry-standard servers featuring standards-based, open interfaces. Next generation Business Communications Platforms (BCPs) are helping unite these separate worlds by delivering voice as a service in an IT architecture.
 
Walk into any modern data center and you’ll find racks and racks of servers acting as application servers, Web servers, email servers, etc. Think of a BCP as another server in a rack—one that delivers enterprise telephony services. BCPs bring convergence to the next level by allowing enterprises to deploy, administer and consume voice in a manner similar to other IT applications. Just as importantly, BCPs enable enterprises to weave voice into their software applications to derive true business value from telephony.
 
Unlike a traditional monolithic PBX, a BCP is a software-based IP telephony solution designed to run on industry-standard servers.  By delivering voice services on standard servers, enterprises can take advantage of ongoing industry price/performance improvements and exploit established server volume purchase agreements, sparing programs, and support contracts for voice.
 
BCPs also simplify and consolidate user administration. PBXs typically feature proprietary administrative and provisioning tools. When an employee joins the company, changes roles or locations, or leaves the company, the change must be effected in the PBX (News - Alert) as well as the IT infrastructure. BCPs, on the other hand, support industry-standard AAA systems such as RADIUS, LDAP, or Microsoft (News - Alert) Active Directory, enabling enterprises to manage voice users using the same tools they employ to manage data or desktop users. With BCPs enterprises can consolidate adds, moves, and changes, and leverage IT systems and staff to administer voice services.
 
Perhaps most importantly, BCPs allow enterprises to efficiently add voice to business applications. Most PBXs offer only low-level vendor specific application programming interfaces that make it difficult and time consuming to integrate voice services into external software applications. To utilize these APIs, a developer must have a telephony background and must be trained in the vendor’s specific programming interface.  BCPs, on the other hand, boast high level APIs that allow enterprises to quickly and easily integrate voice into software applications and business processes.
 
BCPs offer Web Service APIs that shield developers from the complexities of the underlying communication infrastructure. Developers do not need to be telephony experts, nor do they need to learn new skills to add interactive communications to applications or Web sites. Enterprises can utilize existing IT project teams to deliver sophisticated communications-enabled business applications and IT staff can focus on the business solutions rather than the details of telephony protocols. With BCPs, businesses can add voice calling to CRM, ERP, SCM or virtually any business application to improve employee productivity and increase customer satisfaction.
 
Despite their simplicity, BCPs offer comprehensive APIs that enable enterprises to involve external business logic in call handling decisions; to offer outbound notifications via voice, SMS, or email; or to deliver presence-enabled, contextual call routing. In addition, many BCPs offer thin client technology to embed voice directly into a Web page. By adding click-to-talk functionality to a customer-facing Web site, businesses can reduce Web site abandonment and improve eCommerce revenues.
 
By adding voice services to software applications, enterprises can remove human latency from business processes, improve customer communications and employee productivity, increase customer satisfaction and retention, and boost product and service revenues.
 
BCPs deliver true convergence, enabling businesses to deploy, administer and consume voice in a manner similar to other IT applications, and allowing enterprises to integrate voice with Web pages, software applications and business processes. By deploying voice as a service in an IT architecture, enterprises can reduce their total cost of ownership plus derive genuine business value from their telephony infrastructure.
 
Alan Rosenberg is director of Product Line Management for BlueNote Networks (News - Alert). With BlueNote SessionSuite platforms, enterprises, ISVs and partners can quickly and easily embed interactive real-time communication services into a range of commercial or custom software applications, Web sites and internal business processes using industry-standard interfaces and technology. Rosenberg can be reached at [email protected].

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