May 2000

BY CAROL DRZEWIANOWSKI

How much time do you spend in your car every day? I commute a solid 40 minutes to and from work every day. At least once a week I hit heavy traffic heading south, and it takes about an hour. Wouldn't it just be easier to telecommute?

For many workers, the answer is yes. According to the Telework America survey, there were 19.6 million full-time telecommuters in the American workforce in 1999. By 2001, analysts estimate there will be between 60 and 110 million full and part-time mobile workers. And why shouldn't there be? With faster connections and remote access products that can keep a home-based worker connected at the same capacity as one tied to the corporate office, it makes sense on many levels that people should have the option to telecommute.

Network TeleSystems (NTS) announced EnterNet SOHO, which which was developed for individuals who take work home, and for those who work solely from their homes, EnterNet Home Office includes a secure VPN client application, a secure VPN server application, an application for better supporting home networks, and an application that simplifies moving notebooks between locations.

"Employees are no longer tied to their desks in corporate office facilities," said Bill Moore, vice president of marketing and sales at NTS. "The trend to telecommuting is increasing, and employees may work just as effectively from branch offices, hotel rooms or home offices as they do at headquarters. Beyond that, the location independence provided by broadband access and Internet technologies is enabling more and more individuals to treat their home as a principal place of business -- in essence their headquarters. These two trends create demand for being able to access corporate or home resources from anywhere in the world. EnterNet SOHO meets this need, enabling seamless access to home, corporate, Internet, and high-speed broadband networks efficiently and cost-effectively."

Also, Siemens ICN has launched a 22-city seminar series, called "People in Motion," that addresses the subject of increased traffic congestion across the United States, by educating companies about the benefits of teleworking programs, and the issues they need to be aware of to set up remote workers. The half-day seminar and exhibition also introduces attendees to some of the emerging technologies that are making teleworking possible, and includes technology demonstrations by Siemens and its partners IBM, 3Com, Polycom, APC, and Spectralink.

While telecommuting is an attractive option to both workers and businesses, it is important not to forget the special technological needs that remote workers have. MCK Communications takes an in-depth look at some of these needs in the feature article, "Extend Your Corporate Office -- Next-Gen Telecommuting" in this issue. Also, this month's Customer Contact section spotlights some of the latest news in this area.
--Carol Drzewianowski

Customer Contact News

• Locus Dialogue, Clarify Announce Partnership
• Witness Integrates eQuality With Cisco Software
• Artisoft Ships CoSession 2000
• Rockwell Announces Call Center Studio 3.0
• NICE Systems Intros Integrated VoIP Recording Technology
• GBH, MCK To Provide Remote Voice Solution
• Conita Intros PVA Software For Mobile Professionals

Locus Dialogue, Clarify Announce Partnership
Locus Dialogue has joined the Clarify Solutions Alliance. The Locus Dialogue SpeechPortal platform will be used to enable access to Clarify eFrontOffice applications using natural speech. The results will extend Web access to business users via any telephone, anywhere at anytime. In addition to offering this solution to the business-to-business market, Locus Dialogue will deploy a speech-enabled version of Clarify eFrontOffice internally to provide sales and support managers with speech access to customer database information via wired or wireless telephones.
No. 531, www.comsolmag.com/freeinfo

Witness Integrates eQuality With Cisco Software
Witness Systems announced the integration of its eQuality suite with Cisco Systems' Collaboration Server to support businesses as they strive to perfect management of multimedia customer interactions. Witness Systems' eQuality suite integrates with the Cisco Collaboration Server to record and manage Web chat communications, capturing the entire agent-customer experience as it occurs. eQuality Interactive, which records customer interactions and analyzes service delivery and effectiveness for collaborative chat sessions, integrates with Cisco Collaboration Server for sharing Web pages, scripts, text chat, and more. This Internet-based integration between the two applications follows the seamless computer-telephony integration (CTI) connectivity that already exists between the Cisco ICM and Witness Systems software.
No. 532, www.comsolmag.com/freeinfo

Artisoft Ships CoSession 2000
Artisoft has begun shipping CoSession 2000, a major upgrade to its market leading remote access software that includes enhanced features for remote control, file transfer and system recovery. "CoSession 2000 brings together a winning combination of ease-of-use, performance, and modularity that meets the diverse needs of our end-user and help desk support customers," said Scott S. Moule, vice president and general manager of Artisoft's Communications Software Group (CSG). "The overall product design as well as the look-and-feel of the product interface have been enhanced to make CoSession 2000's wide range of features easy to access and operate, even when the user is conducting multiple remote sessions." Designed for mobile computer users, telecommuters, and enterprise IT support professionals, CoSession 2000 offers users increased performance and a new user interface.
No. 533, www.comsolmag.com/freeinfo

Rockwell Announces Call Center Studio 3.0
Rockwell Electronic Commerce has introduced Call Center Studio 3.0, the latest version of its agent desktop application that enables comprehensive, flexible customer relationship management solutions. New features include enhanced dialing functions, new supervisor workstation capabilities, and Rockwell's Adaptive Client Technology (ACT) with Zero Desktop Maintenance. ACT continuously monitors caller-to-agent interaction patterns and varies the screen data caches transparently on agents' PCs. Zero Desktop Maintenance handles all changes, updates, and modifications to agents desktops centrally, reducing time-consuming IT maintenance.
No. 534, www.comsolmag.com/freeinfo

NICE Systems Intros Integrated VoIP Recording Technology
NICE Systems announced its next generation, patent-pending, VoIP recording technology for the multimedia contact center and financial trading environment. The solution is based on the integration of NICE's recording solution with the technology recently acquired from STS Software Systems. NICE's IP recording technology is a key component of NICE's strategy to lead the next-generation contact center market, which will combine e-mail, voice, text chat, Web collaboration, and VoIP. It will enable customers to effectively record, monitor and recreate the entire customer experience taking place on an IP network. In particular, it will enable customers to enhance their business-to-business and business-to- customer interactions over IP.
No. 535, www.comsolmag.com/freeinfo

GBH, MCK To Provide Remote Voice Solution
GBH Distributing and MCK Communications announced that GBH would offer MCK's remote voice products to its customer base. GBH will distribute MCK's complete line of remote voice solutions including the Branch Office EXTender 6000 and single- and multi-user remote client EXTenders and PBXgateways, to address customers' needs for remote voice applications to run over converged voice and data networks. With the addition of GBH, MCK continues to expand its channel to better serve the needs of call centers, branch offices, and teleworkers.
No. 536, www.comsolmag.com/freeinfo

Conita Intros PVA Software For Mobile Professionals
Conita has introduced its first Personal Virtual Assistant (PVA) system and related software products. Conita's customizable PVAsoftware also offers the opportunity for service providers to quickly offer customized services. The productivity enhancements instituted within corporate infrastructures are largely unavailable to the 70 million high value mobile or remote professional workers. Using Conita's PVAServer, these users can access and interact with any data that resides on a corporate network with simple conversational language from any location. PVAServer is a software platform that transforms any phone into a voice portal through which remote users can access any information on public and corporate network. Conita's optional PVA connector for Microsoft Exchange application is fully integrated with Exchange/Outlook so that mobile professionals can manage messages, calendars, contacts, and call control features. Supporting both a COM interface and a telephony interface to voice messaging and PBX systems, PVAServer is an open, scalable and robust PVA platform. PVAServer was designed to allow developers, VARs, integrators, ASPs, and service providers to quickly create, modify, and deploy custom PVA applications that meet specific customer needs.
No. 537, www.comsolmag.com/freeinfo