[October 11, 2000]

Third Party Call Center Applications Easily Distributed Over Shoreline's IP Voice Communications Platform

Shoreline Communications, a provider of enterprise-class IP voice communications, has completed interoperability testing with several leading call center vendors, enabling customers to easily extend the boundaries of their call centers and distribute functionality over the Shoreline platform to agents located virtually anywhere on the customer's IP network.

Vendors completing interoperability testing and certification on the Shoreline platform thus far include: Apropos, CellIT, Interactive Intelligence, Rockwell, Sonant, N-Soft, and Lightning Rod Software. All vendor applications were put through a series of tests to ensure that Shoreline customers can easily deploy these applications and fully leverage their features in conjunction with the capabilities of Shoreline's distributed IP voice platform.

"In the new economy, the responsibility for customer care ultimately belongs to everyone in the organization," said Franklyn Jones, VP of Marketing at Shoreline Communications. "Unfortunately, the inherent limitations of outdated PBX technology have locked companies into the old world model of a centralized `sweat shop' call center environment where best-available agents are drawn from the local labor pool. This model no longer works because it focuses on quantity of customer interactions versus quality of customer care."

Shoreline is solving this problem by enabling companies to leverage the skill set of knowledge workers throughout the organization, and deliver voice-enabled customer care capabilities to those users. This is accomplished through Shoreline's Distributed Internet Voice Architecture (DIVA), which distributes a consistent set of integrated voice services to all users on the IP network, regardless of their physical location. The Shoreline system will support up to 5,000 users across virtually any number of locations -- all managed as a single integrated voice network.

"This announcement is very significant for a couple of reasons," said Blair Pleasant, Managing Director and Principal Analyst with COMMfusion. "First, it allows businesses deploying the Shoreline IP voice communications system to leverage their call center application investments. Secondly, Shoreline's solution makes it possible to replace the traditional call center with a new e-contact center, consisting not of dedicated agents, but of a variety of functional groups, distributed throughout the organization -- such as sales, service, support -- all collaborating to manage and grow customer relationships."

Pricing for call center applications varies with each vendor. All applications are available immediately.

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