IP Telephony vs. Traditional TDM
After the divesture of AT&T, there was a huge demand for Private Branch Exchange (PBX) systems that could be purchased and deployed on customer premises. Throughout the resulting PBX movement, voice quality improved (especially with the digital phone), call capacity expanded, and features on telephone handsets were continually enhanced.
Unfortunately, traditional PBX systems remain proprietary, difficult to administer, and even more difficult to integrate with an organization’s business applications. Enter IP telephony and, with it, converged voice and data communications—which are quickly becoming the primary form of communications for business.
Traditional telephone systems typically consist of a PBX, the telephone handset and voice mail. To meet the various communications requirements of a business, however, optional hardware ‘boxes’ are often required such as a Fax Server, CTI Server, Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system, and Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) system for departments or workgroups like Customer Service, Technical Support, and so on.
While ‘multi-box’ systems deliver voice to the desktop and supply the basic functionality that allows companies to conduct business, their proprietary, hardware-centric approach causes a number of challenges. Among them:
- Completely separate voice and data networks
- Costly, complex equipment to maintain
- One ‘box’ per function, each with its own administration
- Limited integration (if any) for communications and business applications
- A proprietary platform not adaptable to customer/ business requirements
- Telephone devices that impede employee productivity
All businesses must continually evaluate and deploy applications designed to meet the requirements of that business. ‘Multi-box’ communications platforms, however, make integrating new applications difficult if not impossible. And if a business can’t maximize its communications capabilities as needed, it stands to reason that it will struggle to maximize business opportunities, customer service and workforce productivity.
Because of this inability to maximize communications capabilities, a new paradigm for business communications has developed. Rather than separate, non-integrated proprietary hardware systems, this new approach delivers a pre-integrated yet open, flexible software-based solution that seamlessly integrates with the Microsoft® business computing platform. The Customer Interaction Center (CIC) - for the Enterprise, from Interactive Intelligence®, is an excellent example of this new paradigm.
CIC, from Interactive Intelligence, provides several prominent benefits, including:
- A single network for voice communications and data applications
- Pre-integration with Microsoft applications
- The ability to deploy voice as a desktop productivity application
- Adaptability to meet changing business communication requirements
- Simplified central system administration and maintenance
Rather than maintain separate data and voice networks (and separate IT and telephony staff), you can now converge all your communications on a single network and a single platform. This 100% software solution delivers a pre-integrated yet open, flexible solution that seamlessly integrates with the Microsoft business computing platform. Using this new approach, virtually any organization can address its overall communications requirements with a single integrated Microsoft® Windows-based platform.