By Joe Carey, Vice President, Marketing, Vail Systems, Inc.
The telecom industry is undergoing a major paradigm shift away from proprietary networks and channelized switching and transmission equipment. The new paradigm is a modular topology marked by open standards, general-purpose hardware, and broadband economics. More and more, data and voice communications are merging across carriers, business enterprises, and consumer networks (both wired and wireless).
Voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) is expanding over consumer broadband, WiFi and WiMax clouds, and global enterprise VLANs. As this happens, voice and multimodal customer transactions are increasingly being conducted through end-to-end packet networks.
Standalone "black box" interactive voice response (IVR) systems are migrating to open speech recognition and call processing platforms. These platforms knit together call center interactions and enterprise IT infrastructure, extending the rich experience of Web self-service to the telephone.
The time has come to think of the call center and the data center as one, with voice representing just another customer touch-point. All the touch-points in the system are powered by a shared underlying business logic and customer relationship management (CRM) backend.
This convergence empowers IT professionals by:
But challenges remain. Despite the enormous potential of speech recognition technology and the major advances in open standards platforms, self-service speech solutions have stubbornly remained cost prohibitive for most enterprises. The consolidation of telecom and IT also introduces new staffing and training requirements, a greater focus on legacy system integration, and questions about security and quality of service. For example, how do you effectively measure and monitor call traffic in an IP world?
Microsoft Speech Server and VoIP
Microsoft Speech Server (MSS) addresses these challenges. This award-winning open-standards platform delivers a low-cost, scalable solution that enables companies of all sizes to take advantage of speech technology by speech-enabling their Web applications. MSS is highly integrated with familiar Microsoft technologies, such as .NET Visual Studio and .NET Framework, MSSQL Reporting Services, and the extended Windows Server family.
In partnership with Microsoft, Vail Systems has released the Vail SIP Telephony Interface Manager (TIM). The Vail SIP TIM provides MSS customers with a standards-based VoIP telephony option; MSS customers can either integrate with existing VoIP assets or use inexpensive SIP gateways to connect to T1/E1 TDM networks. In the latter case, MSS customers can continue to operate standard telecom and build out an internal SIP network in tandem. In this way, MSS customers can take advantage of VoIP at their own pace while at the same time future-proofing their investment.
A Vail SIP TIM-enabled Microsoft Speech Server functions as a SIP endpoint on a voice-data network. This SIP endpoint can communicate across global enterprise and public networks using:
All inbound and outbound call traffic is conducted using SIP signaling and Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) over a standard Ethernet connection. The Vail SIP TIM achieves this flexibility by connecting the speech application platform to the telephony network layer completely in software. By using software, the Vail SIP TIM avoids the restrictive — and often proprietary — hardware dependencies and scalability limitations typical of alternative IVR solutions.
Richer Self-Service Experience and Customer Reach
VoIP is not simply about the reduced telecom costs and greater operational efficiencies of technology convergence. Perhaps the most significant advantage gained through the combination of the Vail SIP TIM and MSS, is the ability to create new kinds of applications. Your enterprise can now provide customers with more personalized services that take advantage of the tight integration of telephony systems with information systems.
Examples are emerging:
Learn More by Attending Our TechNet Webcast To learn more, you are invited to attend Vail Systems' one-hour TechNet Webcast for IT professionals on:
Tuesday, May 24th, 2005 at 11:30 A.M. Pacific (2:30 P.M. Eastern)
VoIP and Speech in the Enterprise: Is Your IT Department Prepared for the IP Telephony Tipping Point?
In this Webcast, you will:
Register for this webcast.
For additional information, go to http://www.vailsys.com/mss/ and request our free, unlimited-use 2-port Developer Edition of the Vail SIP TIM for Microsoft Speech Server.
Since the release of the Vail SIP TIM in January, Vail Systems has provided hundreds of companies-from large-scale enterprises and carriers to small startups and independent consultants-the free 2-port Developer Edition. We've made this software available so that customers can immediately experience the benefits of VoIP and speech using Microsoft Speech Server. The Vail SIP TIM is typically installed and configured in less than 20 minutes. Customers quickly discover the ease-of-use and flexibility of the Vail SIP TIM as they experience the many advantages that VoIP and speech can offer their business. Try it now.