This article originally appeared in the April 2011 issue of INTERNET TELEPHONY.
Call recording traditionally has been something of a niche business in which specialty recording companies have played. But in recent months the call recording has seen some new entrants that come at this space from various angles.
Two new entrants to this space include service border controller leader Acme Packet (News 
- Alert) and innovative video solution provider Vidyo Inc.
Acme Packet earlier this year announced the rebranding of the session recorder it got through a recent acquisition. What is now known as the Net-Net Interactive Session Recorder, or ISR, is a product that Acme Packet acquired via its purchase of NewFound Communications in January.
The ISR is not aimed at contact centers, as are some traditional recording solutions, says
Steve Collins, Acme Packet vice president of marketing. Rather, it’s meant to help businesses and other organizations meet regulatory compliance requirements around session recording, he says.
Collins goes on to note that in the U.K. there are new regulations requiring that all mobile calls by securities traders must be recorded. A natural place to do that kind of recording, he adds, is within the service provider network. Acme Packet envisions service providers hanging the ISR off their SIP trunks to deliver call recording services from the cloud. Indeed, several major U.S. service providers today leverage the NewFound solution, he adds.
Although the current product (software running on industry-standard servers) addresses voice call recording only, Acme Packet plans to evolve the ISR to record all kinds of SIP-based sessions, whether they involve voice, video, chat, screen sharing, or other types of communications. The ISR – which sells for around $250 per session and can support up to 400 simultaneous sessions – not only captures sessions, it enables security and storage (either within the enterprise or within a service provider network) of those sessions. It can work with any IP PBX or softswitch, and doesn’t require an SBC to be in place.
Meanwhile, Vidyo (News - Alert) in February announced the availability of the VidyoReplay appliance. This tool is aimed to allow easy-to-use webcasting and recording for the Vidyo solution. It enables large numbers of users to watch a Vidyo conference via web browser, either in real time or later
“Here at ASU’s School of Life Sciences, students are participating in high-quality Vidyo exchanges with Smithsonian Institution scientists and researchers located in the jungles of Panama,” says Charles Kazilek, director of technology integration and outreach at the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University. “With VidyoReplay we can now capture these valuable interactions to use as an educational resource for larger groups of students to view and learn from; it enhances the learning experience for our faculty and students, alike. The Vidyo system transforms typical mediated classrooms on campus into real-time, research and learning environments.”
Ofer Shapiro (News - Alert), Vidyo’s co-found and CEO, adds: “VidyoReplay extends Vidyo’s ability to connect disparate endpoints to deliver low-cost, HD multipoint videoconferences and now allows users to capture this content for future off-line viewing, anytime and anyplace. Our customers in education, health care, legal services, and the enterprise are finding VidyoReplay a ‘must have’ tool for a variety of different purposes – lowering expenses, generating revenues, collaborating efficiently across time zones, sharing information with large audiences and providing value-added services to their client base. The ability to easily and affordably record and broadcast high-quality Vidyo conferences is another reason that so many organizations are embracing Vidyo technology and products.”
Recording is also a key focus of companies such as OrecX, which recently introduced the Open Source Recording Channel on TMCnet. The Open Source Recording Channel promotes an array of solutions available from OrecX. In addition, visitors can find valuable resources such as product guides, testimonials, feature articles and industry news.
And, as discussed in the July issue of INTERNET TELEPHONY,Aspect (News - Alert) with release 6.6. of Unified IP has bolstered its recording capabilities with improved recording archiving, security and encryption. This allows companies to record interactions while complying with regulations, such as support for outbound recording in multiple locations.
“The new additions to Aspect’s Unified IP platform address some of the key issues for contact centers,” says Aphrodite Brinsmead, analyst of customer interaction technologies at Ovum. “These tools enable enterprises to simplify business processes and gain more control over distributed contact centers. Aspect continues to differentiate itself in a competitive contact center industry by focusing on unified communications and its partnership with Microsoft.”Andy Bezaitis, senior vice president of product management at Aspect, adds that the company uses direct customer feedback to ensure it’s not delivering technology for technology’s sake, but actually providing capabilities that will deliver significant benefits to organizations.
“Being able to deploy the solution quicker is very important, as well as delivering innovations that enable our customers to operate in a highly regulated and competitive environment,” says Bezaitis. “Our focus is on ensuring that our customers have the solution they need when they need it….”
Other call recording trends include the move to support HD audio and multilingual support, say SIP Print (News - Alert) CEO Donald C. Palmer and CTO Jonathan Fuld.
SIP Print last year released a G.722 high-definition version of it call recording solution. The company also recently came out with support for the G.729 codec, which got the company into the carrier side of the business, and G.723.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi
