Session Initiation Protocol (News - Alert), or SIP, has a wide range of applications in the Internet Protocol (IP) telephony industry. One of these is to make the communications environments in call and contacts centers more reliable, secure and easy to manage. This is the very area being addressed with Interactive Intelligence’s (News - Alert) new Interaction SIP Proxy 4.0 release, announced Wednesday.

 

This SIP proxy product handles routing interactions between servers in a SIP-based IP telephony environment. It’s especially geared toward distributed enterprises and contact centers.

 

The original version of Interaction SIP Proxy debuted in 2003, when it was distributed as free during an industry event. An “Advanced” version of the software was introduced in early 2004, followed by version 3.0 in 2005. Building on past success, version 4.0 of Interaction SIP Proxy features enhanced security, simplified deployment, and boosted reliability.

 

Interactive Intelligence Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Joseph Staples, said Interaction SIP Proxy 4.0 includes a new feature, source-based routing, that makes it possible to route interactions based on their place of origin. The feature results in a simpler deployment process and more operational efficiency.

 

“Previously our SIP proxy could route interactions based on where they were going in the ‘to’ field, but routing based on the source where multiple servers and gateways were involved would mean increasingly complex, thus time-consuming configurations,” Staples said in a statement.

 

Also a first for Interaction SIP Proxy, version 4.0 is validated for virtual use with VMware ESX 3.0 (an enterprise-grade virtualization platform), reducing further the number of servers required to run an all-SIP environment. Hawley said that converting to the VMware ESX platform means not only fewer servers for load balancing and redundancy, but also results in cost savings, and reduced power demand for a “greener” solution.

 

Interaction SIP Proxy 4.0 is available as a stand-alone product, or with Interactive Intelligence’s all-in-one IP communications software suite. It comes in three versions, to accommodate all sizes of distributed enterprises and contact centers: Basic, Business Continuity, and Load Balancer. The solution has applications in a variety of vertical industries, including healthcare, retail, financial services (payment card) and teleservices.

 

Already, Interaction SIP Proxy 4.0 is getting rave reviews from Interactive Intelligence customers who are finding that the solution meets their needs. For example, Richard Hawley, senior network engineer at Connecticut-based American Customer Care (News - Alert), said Interaction SIP Proxy is helping out his company with the conversion process from traditional telephony to an all-VoIP system. In particular, the solution ensures that the centralized system with fewer components can handle high call volumes reliably.

 

“Interaction SIP Proxy has helped us maximize our system uptime, while migrating to this consolidated ‘virtual’ contact center model,” Hawley said in a statement. “Version 4.0’s new SMTP alerts for more effective system monitoring further help us guarantee uptime for our customers, which is of paramount importance in the outsourced contact center services industry.”

 

Interaction SIP Proxy 4.0 is available through Interactive Intelligence’s global network of resellers in the Americas, Europe, Canada, Africa, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East.