The VON buyin’ express

Apr 18, 2002 12:00 PM, Tim McElligott

Spring VON didn’t set any attendance records in Seattle last week, but vendors and promoters didn’t seem to mind. Quality triumphed over quantity as foot traffic was weighted toward the service provider sort. If they weren’t spending then and there, they were planning their spending, vendors say. And in today’s climate, that was good enough. Here is a smattering of what shoppers may have seen at the conference.

 Aspect Communications

Aspect Communications is targeting what many experts believe will be one of the biggest initial markets for IP services: the contact center. The company introduced its IP Contact Suite (IPCS) version 1.1 last week as a true soft-switch technology that lets companies respond to customer queries over a converged voice and data network.

 The product offers new features such as voice messaging via e-mail, support for session initiation protocol (SIP) phones as well as those that support H323. It also includes and adapter for Lotus Domino which broadens existing support of Microsoft Exchange.

Aspect hopes to provide large enterprise contact center administrators the ability to add and remove additional agents from remote locations as needed with full capabilities including VoIP, Web sharing, chat sessions, e-mail, fax and live video. 

“Customer care is the killer app,” said Jim Hirni, Vice President of IP Contact Center Technology at Aspect. “And this lets anyone, anywhere on the network become an agent.”

One of the highlights of the new suite is the ability to do advanced, skills-based routing which best matches an inquiry to the customer service representative’s level of expertise. 

In separate announcements, Aspect said it would enable its solutions to work in conjunction with oracle e-business suite 11i. The Oracle database will bring together all the elements of a company’s relationship with its customers so that the CSR understands the importance of particular relationships and what their needs are. 

The company also announced an agreement with the advanced research and technology business of BT, called BTexact, to act as a system integrator for Aspect’s IPCS. BT has installed IPCS in its customer relationship management demonstration center.

AT&T Communications

AT&T announced an access solution last week that could turn all of its data customers into potential voice customers regardless of whether their access mode is ATM, frame relay or IP. AT&T now offers VoIP as a managed service through its Managed Internet Service, Managed Data Network Services and Managed Router Services. 

The new capabilities also allow AT&T’s VoIP-enabled customers to hop off the IP network onto the global public network for lower off-net rates.

“This new capability is significant because it is real,” said Joe Aibinder, VoIP product manager at AT&T. “IT managers aren’t interested in doing science projects. They aren’t risk takers.”

AT&T offers up to T-3 speeds (45Mb/s) for VoIP services and now offers it as an on-net services in more than 50 countries, bringing what VON host Jeff Pulver calls mainstream status.

NMS Communications

NMS Communications will be giving voice to the mobile market with the acquisition of Boston-based MessageMachines, a wireless infrastructure software developer, and the extension of its HearSay whole product solution for voice-enabled services to include support from Oracle and Sun Microsystems.

NMS has integrated the Oracle9i application server and Sun’s SPARC Solaris platforms with HearSay to support the deployment of voice-enabled services such as voice-activated dialing, personal voice portals, short and unified messaging, chat and conferencing, and personal information management solutions such as calendars, e-mails and address books. 

Aimed at wireless operators, HearSay provides voice access to through an open, single-source solution that includes operations and billing integration, Level 3 NEBS compliance, speech and voice processing and multi-language text-to-speech products.

“Operators are looking for portability not just across technologies, but across languages,” said Brian Demers, vice president and general manager, Network Solutions at NMS. 

The acquisition of MessageMachines will strengthen NMS’ play in wireless data and messaging. The company’s protocol and message switching products helps route text messages between wireless networks and various devices, including mobile phones, PDAs and pagers. It also supports presence and IM services, short message service and wireless application protocol (WAP) messages.

“Best of all, this doesn’t show up in pieces, but shows up working. From Day 1 it supports connectivity to SS7, ISDN and direct IP,” Demers said.

Telverse Communications

Telverse, a start-up IP communications service provider based in Dulles, Va., introduced a nationwide, hosted IP-Centrex service aimed at small to medium enterprises and value-added resellers. The service will use a Genuity backbone and partner with Sylantro for the application platform.

Telverse will partner with Seattle-based Redapt Network Integration to market its service to small and medium-sized enterprises in the Northwestern U.S. The company plans to build a network of value-adder resellers to market its service nationwide.

“People are looking new services, but we are rolling out the services that people want today,” said Oliver Davis, vice president of strategic alliances at Telverse.

Redapt is also a customer of Telverse, using it hosted IP-Centrex service internally.

A main feature of Telverse’s service is the TelePortal Web-based interface that lets enterprise users to manage their service, including moves, adds and changes and initiating find me/follow me features.

Jasomi Networks

Building on its SIP-based approach to distancing itself from its peers, Jasomi Networks introduced a line of SIP-to-SIP gateways for inter-carrier voice-over-IP call peering. Jasomi’s PeerPoint gateways allow service providers to pass calls over an IP link and bypass the public network.

PeerPoint provides a demarcation point between carriers that didn’t previously exist across an IP link. This allows VoIP carriers to exchange SIP calls without introducing potential voice-quality degradation due to recompression of the packets as they traverse the public network. The gateway also adds a level of security for calls originating from the Internet and some instant messaging applications.

By default, the gateway gives rise to another product introduced by Jasomi. It is a CALEA technology framework designed to solve the issues involved in lawful intercept. 

“Carriers don’t necessarily want to solve this problem, but they will be forced to,” said Dan Freedman, founder and CEO at Jasomi.

Jasomi’s new intercept box can be used at the edge of a carrier’s VoIP network to provide a single point of termination through which law enforcement can access the audio stream portion of a call. In IP networks the audio stream, as well as the signaling portion of the call, often take different routes even during the same call event. Without a single point of termination carriers could not always provide law enforcement with the required access. 

“We can duplicate the packets and send them to law enforcement personnel through a process called bi-casting,” Freedman said.

Jasomi put out a call for potential collaborators interested in working to extend the intercept box concept.

Hughes Software Systems

Hughes launched a SIP Server Framework that can be used by carriers, 3G operators and enterprises as a lookup server, proxy server, redirect server or registrar.

Available in source code form to equipment manufacturers, the framework is designed to enable equipment vendors to implement new SIP-based applications.

International Softswitch Consortium

The ISC launched a Wireless Working Group intended to promote softswitch technology for 2G and 3G wireless core networks. The group will be responsible for educating the industry on the benefits of softswitch technology in wireless networks and helping to create an open, standards-based wireless network core. It also will form a community of vendors that will initiate trials and perform interoperability testing. In addition to creating test scripts, interface requirements and gap analysis on various standards, the group will conduct a service provider survey to evaluate softswitch deployment in the wireless network core.