NT makes its mark
Computer telephony (CT) has come a long way since its early days (in the
late 1970s), when disk storage was costly and processor power was available only
in rack-mounted minicomputers. Back then, manufacturers of the first voicemail
systems faced a formidable task building them because virtually no
off-the-shelf hardware or software components were available. Those
manufacturers had to create everything, including the underlying operating
systems, from scratch. Telephony products were expensive, bulky, and not very
feature-rich.
Today, the CT industry is flourishing. Industry analysts expect the total
CT market to reach $7.9 billion by 1999. You can attribute part of this dramatic
growth to new, widely acknowledged standards, widely available PC hardware
components from industry leaders such as Dialogic, and an ever-growing list of
vendors offering software and turnkey solutions.
So what is computer telephony? It is the technology that lets
computer-based systems automatically answer, handle, and even make phone calls.
Voicemail (that often-used time-saver that everyone loves and sometimes hates),
auto attendant ("If you know the extension of the person you would like to
reach, enter it now"), fax-on-demand ("faxback"), and LAN-based
fax servers are among popular mainstream CT applications. But telephony doesn't
stop there. Desktop control of your telephone calls is a reality with
Microsoft's Telephony API (TAPI) for Windows NT and the availability of
TAPI-enabled applications. And with Microsoft Exchange, you can manage your
voice, fax, and email messages all from within one program--the Exchange client.
NT is a significant event on the CT industry landscape because NT provides a
new, high-performance operating system standard for CT system design. Perhaps
even more important, NT is rapidly gaining in worldwide enterprise popularity.
Virtually every major CT manufacturer is now developing NT products that are
fully compatible with NT LANs and related infrastructure.
With this article, I begin ongoing coverage of NT and CT. I hope to give you
a window to what's happening in this dynamic industry segment, how it affects
your business, and more important, how you can use the new CT technologies to
improve your business communications. I define some common industry terms in "Computer Telephony Terms Defined," page 78.
Report from the CT Demo Fall '96 Show
The Computer Telephony Demo Fall '96 show in Orlando October 30 through
November 2 was the sister to the main-event show for the CT industry--the
Computer Telephony Conference and Expo--held annually in the spring. What made
the Demo Fall show unusual was that each exhibiting firm had the same booth
setup (and nicely done, I must say). The show was limited to 70 companies that
the show promoters handpicked for the companies' interesting and cutting-edge
products. Each exhibitor had 10 minutes of fame on stage for a live
demonstration to the attendee audience.
The Importance of NT
NT is influencing the CT industry in a major way. Virtually every presenting
firm at the show either had an NT-based product or had one in the works. At the
show, I sat with industry veteran John Alfieri, vice president of Sales and
Support at Dialogic, the industry's largest peripheral producer. I asked him for
his NT views.
"In the customer premise and enterprise server segment of the computer
telephony marketplace, my feeling, very strongly, is that it's going to be NT,"
he said. "I see Microsoft staying extremely focused on maintaining NT
momentum. Dialogic believes in open standards, and NT is a great environment for
open CT development. We are doing all we can to enable our customers' success on
the NT platform."
Indeed, a good percentage of the manufacturers on the show floor are using
Dialogic components in their NT-based products. Other leading component vendors
such as Rhetorex and Natural Microsystems are singing the same tune, so NT is
fully here in CT. Let me highlight some products from the show.
Enterprise Interaction Center
Enterprise Interaction Center (EIC) from Interactive Intelligence is an
all-in-one, NT-based communications server that handles a variety of corporate
communications functions. It provides universal inbox capability with support
for voicemail, fax mail, and email. With Microsoft Exchange (which is rapidly
becoming the standard unified messaging desktop front-end in enterprise
environments), you manage all message types from your desktop; so no matter what
type of message you receive, it shows up as a new message object in your
Exchange Inbox.
What makes the communications server solution so compelling is that it
provides corporate Private Branch eXchange (PBX) functionality at its core.
Also, EIC offers voicemail, automated attendant, Automatic Call Distribution
(ACD), and fax server functions in the same PC-based system. This facility means
single-point management for all these corporate communications functions.
Figure 1 offers the conventional picture: Workstations connect to the
corporate LAN, and each user has an individual phone extension. Conventional
wisdom says you need a separate, optimized box for each communications subsystem
such as the PBX, voicemail, and fax server systems. Each subsystem has its set
of maintenance utilities, procedures, wiring, power requirements, and so on.
This communications server architecture, shown in Figure 2, not only
simplifies maintenance and support but has an additional benefit of eliminating
one of the thorniest problems CT manufacturers face: integration with a
particular phone system, or PBX. The vast majority of voicemail and
auto-attendant systems are installed behind the PBX, giving those systems the
ability to freely transfer calls to any phone extension. The difficulty arises
because the interface details for each PBX can be significantly different, and
worse, a PBX vendor can consider its interface proprietary. And without tight
PBX integration, CT call handling can be less than perfect.
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