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Microsoft on Integrating Voice,
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Courtesy of MicrosoftToday, organizations typically use separate equipment, wiring, and personnel for voice and data networking. This is changing as widespread adoption of Internet technologies is making it practical and compelling to run voice and video communication solutions on data networks. This convergence of voice and data networking can help companies reduce operating costs, increase productivity, and enable new business solutions. Using a converged network can reduce costs by allowing organizations to better use communications equipment and eliminate redundant hardware, software, wiring, and support. For example, one of the most significant costs associated with owning a phone system is the cost of adding, moving or otherwise changing telephone set configurations. A converged network infrastructure can allow these voice-related adds, moves, and changes to be handled automatically with updating other networking privileges for personnel. Businesses can cut costs even more by using the Internet instead of private, or dedicated, phone lines for selected communications between their offices and with their business partners. While reducing the total cost of ownership may be a key benefit that prompts many organizations to deploy converged networks, it is expected that the potential of these next-generation networks to enable even more compelling business applications will likely deliver the most business impact. Increasingly, applications and the networks over which these applications run are becoming more integrated. Solutions, such as real-time collaboration, are being developed and deployed to be able to request certain levels of network performance based on the user profile, time of day, or other characteristics. These capabilities allow applications to maximize whatever bandwidth and network service level is available, while delivering new forms of business value. Because of the cost and productivity advantages, most organizations of all sizes are expected to move toward use of these unified communications infrastructures over time. The merger of voice, video, and data networking is in the early stages of adoption today. Applications that take advantage of these converged communications capabilities are first appearing in larger organizations in pilot stages and then in broader deployments with existing legacy systems. In addition, these convergent solutions are increasingly being adopted in new facilities/offices where there are no legacy systems to further amortize. The WindowsÆ 2000 Server operating system, with its support for Internet-standard data protocols and its programmable communications services, provides a flexible foundation for this new generation of converged data, voice, and video communications. Likewise, Windows 2000 Professional includes client services such as Windows NetMeetingÆ conferencing software, Phone Dialer, and client software for browsing, conferencing, and streaming media. These Windows 2000 communications services can help you integrate voice, video, and data communications to give your organization these capabilities and more:
Computer Telephony and Customer Contact CentersThe term "computer telephony" refers to the use of computing intelligence to automate the process of handling incoming or outgoing phone calls. There is a wide variety of computer telephony applications that deliver cost savings and increased productivity for organizations of all sizes. One area within the organization where these computer telephony technologies are often used most extensively is the call center. Just as network convergence is impacting data and voice networking in general, convergence is also impacting the call center in some profound ways and Windows 2000, with its built-in computer telephony infrastructure support, provides a great platform for these applications. You probably use computer telephony applications every day and you may not realize it. For example, organizations use Interactive Voice Response (IVR) solutions to allow customers to check account balances and the status of shipments or to perform other tasksóall by using telephone dial-pad or speech-driven commands over the phone, 24 hours a day. Many organizations use fax server applications, predictive dialers, automatic attendants and other such applications to reduce communications costs and provide customer service. For many organizations, the telephone is one of the most important vehicles for interacting with its customers and partners. For some organizations, the telephone has been the only way of interacting with most customers. As a result, one of the most important usage areas of computer telephony technology is in the call center. Here, computer telephony solutions automatically route incoming phone calls from customers to the next available customer service agent who is able to most appropriately handle the call. Sophisticated call routing rules can be used in these solutions to deliver the best customer service economically, while enabling the organization to monitor the performance of the entire operation. The Internet and network convergence is now significantly changing the way organizations provide customer service. As a result, call centers are evolving to become customer contact centers, enabling customers to interact with an agent however the customer desiresóvia phone, e-mail, fax, chat, Instant Messaging, Voice-over IP, or by other means. Organizations are already seeing how providing real-time customer service on the Web can improve their e-commerce sales so most organizations with call centers are in the process of evolving these environments to better meet customer needs. Windows 2000 can play a critical role in these computer telephony solution areas. With its built-in support of the Windows Telephony Applications Programming Interface (TAPI) version 3.0 and with new services, such as Web Telephony Engine, Windows 2000 provides an organization with new forms of choice and cost-savings for computer telephony solutions. TAPI is a software abstraction layer in Windows that allows software applications written by one vendor to work with phone systems made by another vendor. TAPI has historically provided the ability for programmers to make use of several call control features within their applications for handling calls over the Public Switched Telephone Network. TAPI 3.0 builds on these capabilities to provide programmatic support for IP-based and even ATM-based networks, as well, so that an application can deliver a consistent user experience regardless of the network infrastructure used to route the call. Because TAPI 3.0 uses Component Object Model (COM) technology, a wide variety of programming languages can be used to develop telephony applications or to telephony-enable existing applications. This means that enterprise developers and VAR or system integrator developers can now take advantage of computer telephony automation in their applications using the computing language of their choice. In addition, TAPI 3.0 is integrated with other services in the operating system, such as Active Directory and QoS, for enhanced manageability, performance, and ease of use. In fact, Windows 2000 can be used not only as a foundation for voice communications applications, Windows is also being used as the platform for a growing number of multi-service communications systems from a variety of vendors. These next-generation voice systems, unlike legacy phone systems, provide inherent integration with the voice applications and provide a compelling user experience with traditional telephone sets or new IP-based telephone sets. These systems also deliver new levels of ease-of-use for administration and an attractive total cost of ownership.
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