Technology trade events, like most technology magazines, are pitched to a specific audience (e.g., call center managers), and cover a specific, narrowly defined subject matter (e.g., call center infrastructure). This has never been true of Expo (nor of Computer Telephony Magazine), since both were founded to evangelize new communications technologies - technologies with very broad, indeed revolutionary, applicability. Our content has always been pitched not to a specific job description or industry segment, but to innovators across the board: elite managers, implementors, manufacturers, channel entities, consultants, service providers empowered to drive technology change.

For this reason, Expo - and CT Magazine, as well - have always embraced the whole spectrum of communications platform components, products, and services, and have distinguished themselves from the mass of topic-focused events and media by communicating with attendees and readers at a higher conceptual level. While other shows and magazines tried to push boxes, we pushed strategy, attitudes, new skills, innovation, business benefits. Ultimately, we pushed the logic of a single infrastructure for all communications applications.

And what do you know? Today, the Internet is the underlying toolkit from which all communications applications derive and with which all applications interoperate; wireless, handheld computers, speech recognition, the web, specialized information appliances, offering a plethora of endpoint and user interface options. The big message - as this year's Expo amply demonstrated - was about convergence: a single infrastructure, a single development effort, a single broadband pipe, driving a multitude of applications and delivery systems.

But the Internet - and the enormous investment in the web and broadband that today's communications applications and services can now leverage as infrastructure - also has changed everything. Not least of which, the pace of development and change. This year's Expo featured a veritable explosion of new or significantly upgraded products - more than 150 brand-new items from over 300 exhibitors. Telephony has learned to leverage Internet tools and development paradigms.

Some of the benefits: Voice portal architectures, mostly driven by the increasingly dominant VoiceXML script language, are set to supersede box-bound IVR and connect phones to web-based transaction processing engines and data sources. Portal providers like VoiceGenie, NetByTel, and TellMe are getting big clients. And companies like VSR are bringing VoiceXML technology down into the realm of CPE communications servers.

Every new phone system and communications server shown at CT Expo 2001 is IP capable: both in terms of trunking, and in terms of remote station support. Remote telephony/ data will be a huge growth area in 2001-2002, as call centers and the enterprise exploit these technologies to lower overhead, retain employees, and gain access to new talent pools.

Big players are entering the xSP/ITSP marketplace. Worldcom was demonstrating its soon-available ASP call center service, privately branded, but clearly based on Telephony@Work's award-winning infrastructure. When carriers at that scale step up to the plate, it rationalizes the whole "rent an app" paradigm. ITSPs for messaging, unified communications, notification, wireless interface, gatekeeper services, and other high- and low-level communications functions were also much in evidence.

With such a plethora of important new products, services, and initiatives, our Editors were hard-pressed to select the best for our traditional - and much-coveted - Best of Show Awards. We were forced to choose more winners than in prior years - still a stringently circumscribed sampling from the over 300 exhibitors present.

3Com Enhances NBX with Call Center Apps

3Com (Santa Clara, CA - 408-326-5000) made two major additions to the NBX family at CT Expo, announcing the NBX Call Center and demonstrating the SuperStack 3 NBX, a denser version of the existing NBX 100 platform. An application running on the LAN-based NBX call control server, the Call Center software performs intelligent call routing, dynamically configured queuing, and real-time monitoring and reports. While the NBX 100 can support up to 200 extensions, and the new Superstack 3 version supports up to 600, NBX Call Center is aimed at smaller user groups, with a sweet spot of 25 agents or below. Easy to configure and manage, the Call Center's basic and advanced features are all exposed through GUIs and drag-n-drop elements. Because it uses 3Com's networked telephony resources as its base, the Call Center works for any user connected to the server via LAN or WAN, through one of 3Com's Ethernet phones. NBX Call Center is the first major application that 3Com has added to the system, while continuing to enhance the NBX itself. Also worthy of note at 3Com: a new line of business IP phones that integrate with Palm Pilot apps over an infrared port.

Aculab Reaps the CTI Whirlwind

Aculab (Milton Keynes, UK - +44-0-1908-27-3839) has decided to compete against Intel/Dialogic's CT Media and Brooktrout's RealComm platform with their new Whirlwind, an ECTF S.100-based high-performance CT server that's offered with no license charge.

Whirlwind allows for multi-platform and mixed platform development, so developers can use CPUs and operating systems appropriate to their needs.

Adomo Launches Mobile Communications Server

Adomo (Cupertino, CA - 408-996-7086) unveiled its first product, the Adomo Mobile Communications Server (MCS), at CT Expo. It grabbed our attention with its elegant approach to mobile messaging. Adomo accurately refers to the MCS as an "appliance" because the system is self-contained and more or less plug-n-play. Encased in a stackable, pizza-box-style server, Adomo MCS is an adjunct to a Microsoft Exchange server, and lets users access any messages or other Exchange information by phone, using text-to-speech and speech recognition. The user navigates menus using speech commands, and can listen to, reply, and compose email messages, calendar entries, or contact information strictly using voice. Unlike some unified messaging systems with similar capabilities, no complex integration with Exchange or with the phone system is required. You simply plug the MCS box into a LAN and it establishes direct communication with Exchange, while leaving all messages and other user data on the Exchange server itself. This "stateless" system architecture makes the MCS easy to set up and manage, and virtually eliminates any extra cost beyond the low upfront list price. The MCS comes in 12-port and T1 configurations.

Advantech's 1U cPCI Rackmount

The space-efficient "pizza box" has come to the world of CompactPCI. Advantech (San Diego, CA - 858-623-0838) debuted at CT Expo the MIC-3035, a 1U-high, slim rugged enclosure that contains a clever two-slot (one system slot and one peripheral slot) 6U cPCI backplane. The MIC-3035 can hold up to four devices, including a slim floppy drive, CD-ROM, and two 3.5-inch hard drives. A 150 Watt ATX power supply (AC or DC) drives the system, which is cooled by four 10.5 CFM cooling fans. Another version, the MIC-3377/M, holds a single-slot 6U cPCI single-board computer with VGA and dual LANs.

AFC's PremMax IAD

Advanced Fibre Communications (Petaluma, CA - 707-794-7700) made its name in digital loop carriers, the above-ground, outside-plant cabinets that aggregate and multiplex local loop analog into digital lines for connection to the CO's main distribution frame. They're taking that application to the broadband multitenant-unit (MTU) market with the PremMax, an Integrated Access Device that combines the functions of a channel bank, local switch, router, CSU/DSU, and multiplexer. It can also work in front of a PBX.

Pitched to ILECs, CLECs, building LECs and enterprises, the PremMax converges narrowband voice and broadband data networks at the enterprise and provides remote diagnostics and management (via embedded web server, SNMP, command-line interface, FTP and Telnet). It can allocate bandwidth by DSO. At the CO or in the building basement, AFC's partner product, the AccessMAX Integrated Multiservice Access Platform, aggregates voice for the Class 5 switch and forwards it using GR-303 signalling, and grooms data traffic onto the ATM, IP, or frame relay data network, eliminating the need for a separate digital cross connect system. It provides up to 32 FXS voice ports and four T1s or E1s; a module swap adapts the CPE to DSL.

AG Communications Takes Centrex to the Next Level

Lucent subsidiary AG Communications (Phoenix, AZ - 888-888-2427) is updating Centrex's image with its iMerge Centrex Feature Gateway and, more recently, its ClientCare Call Center Deluxe Edition. iMerge is essentially a VoIP gateway that works with a Class 5 switch to extend the Centrex feature set across an IP network in the local loop. Simply using IP as a delivery mechanism helps overcome many of the traditional limitations associated with Centrex service, particularly those of geographical boundaries. With iMerge, for instance, branch office workers and telecommuters can access the same Centrex features as users at a central site, regardless of their proximity to a common local exchange switch. ClientCare is a complete, network-based call center application built for this same environment. ClientCare can interface directly to both a Class 5 switch and the IP network, and routes calls to agents in any location, over any transport mechanism. Like iMerge, one of the main advantages of ClientCare is that it supports a distributed enterprise, treating multiple offices and teleworker connections under a single, logical routing scheme. The system also offers a great set of features, including IVR, skills-based routing, screen pops, and blended inbound/outbound capabilities.

Alliance Systems' I-Series 9000

Of the many 19-inch rackmount comm servers offered by Alliance Systems (Plano, TX - 972-633-3400), the new 9U I-Series 9000 is perhaps the most versatile, poised between the mammoth I-Series 11000 and the much smaller I-Series 5000. The 9000 is designed for networks, medium-sized contact centers, PBXs, and ASPs. It can hold eight 5.25-inch drives and is unique among the I-Series for offering not two but three auto-switched, hot-swap, dual-lead, load-sharing power supplies (110/220VAC or -48VDC).

The I-Series 9000 backplanes support combinations of up to 20 ISA/PCI slots. It's cooled by three 140 CFM fans that can be removed from the front of the enclosure. OS support includes Windows NT, 2000, UNIX or Linux.

AltiGen's AltiServ 4.0 Call Center

AltiGen Communications (Fremont, CA - 510-252-9712) wowed us with the enhanced contact center features of their AltiServ 4.0 platform, released late last year. Aimed at medium-sized service businesses, AltiServ 4.0 provides full PC PBX phone system functionality, driving analog or IP telephones locally or remotely. Now it can serve the needs of an internal or external, formal or informal contact center, as well. The contact center features are a cut above the kind of basic call queuing normally available on good-quality PC PBXs. One AltiServ can handle calls for up to 128 agents, with a maximum of 64 agents in a workgroup (sales, customer service, tech support, etc.). A head-end auto-attendant handles group selection, then plays on-hold music/messages while they await assistance. Simple, PC-based configuration and management interfaces let even a non-call-center specialist set up and assign agents to workgroups, control messaging on multiple queues, monitor and whisper-coach agents, and track overall call center, workgroup, and agent performance. A similar, though less-intrusive agent interface presents agents with current-call detail, as well as cumulative performance stats. The interface can easily share a desktop with back-end and web-based scripting, wrap-up, and other tools.

The AltiServ may be a good choice for companies prioritizing Internet-based commerce and wishing to enable remote-workers. Click-to-call and co-browsing are supported by AltiGen's AltiWeb component. Enhanced IP gateway functions let remote agents - equipped with a laptop with Quicknet IP telephony board or with one of Siemens' new IP telephones - log on and serve customers from anywhere.

This is quite a serious contact center solution - and AltiGen is committed to making it very affordable; especially attractive to current customers. The contact center feature set, including web-contact enhancements, can run on an existing 4.0 platform for an estimated $6,000.

AltiGen and Flextel's Enhanced IP PBX Platform

For years, AltiGen Communications (Fremont, CA - 510-252-9712) has been known for its popular small- and medium-sized PC-based phone systems. At CT Expo, AltiGen took a leap forward, thanks in large measure to an amazing new hardware platform provided by the Italian Flextel SpA (San Jose, CA - 408-298-8587, www.flextel.it). Both AltiGen and Flextel announced the release of the ctiMultiVision 1200 series chassis, designed specifically for AltiGen's OE 4.0 IP-Business Telephone System.

The ctiMultiVision 1200 can host up to 22 AltiGen PCI Triton cards, creating a telephone system with 192 analog extensions and multiple T1/E1 and VoIP channels. Five configurations range from three to 12 slots and from 24 to 192 extensions, allowing for considerable customization. Two of the configurations are multi-session, allowing multiple systems to independently run on a single platform. Although the systems are independent, they have a higher level of redundancy because backup CPUs can be shared.

Best: You can mix PCI, ISA, and CompactPCI boards in the same chassis! You can take your old AltiGen Trident boards and move them into a new system having high-density functionality provided by new-generation cPCI boards.

Amoeba Telecom's CTAP Analyzes and Manages Traffic

Amoeba Telecom (Coimbatore, India - 91(422) 311645) was showing their impressive Convergence Traffic Analysis Platform (CTAP), a distributed data-acquisition and analysis system for real-time traffic management on converged multi-application networks - for example, on complex ITSP networks serving multiple customers. Data is acquired by remote probes and installed transparently at significant network nodes. The probes record traffic in bulk and perform progressive analysis, submitting results to a CTA Server component (running on a fast NT machine), installed within each network segment. The server - or, in real-world implementations, the network of servers - does the heavy lifting of packet sniffing, filtering, protocol validation, etc., in different modes; maintains the statistical database; and runs real-time heuristics for automatic data analysis and alarming. Servers are collectively controlled by CTA clients, which can be anywhere in the network.

The analysis system runs across all seven layers of the OSI stack (server and application protocols like HTTP, IMAP, FTP, POP3; all the way down to link-layer Ethernet), and can be enhanced with additional plug-in analysis and certification modules on an as-needed basis. The user interface is highly customizable, and XML and text-file output makes raw and cooked data available to other applications. A sophisticated VQ-Metrics component focuses on QoS-related statistical analysis and SLA compliance, and can produce customer-specific reports.

Amtelco's XDS H.100 MC-3 UltraLite Board

Amtelco (McFarland, WI - 608-838-4194) has solved the problem of application scale, connecting up to five chassis without sophisticated hardware overkill or exotic switching fabrics. The solution, shown at CT Expo, is the new XDS Infinity Series H.100 PCI MC-3 UltraLite board. The UltraLite provides fully dynamic time-slot switching from one chassis to another. Board-to-application communication is carried through dual-ported RAM.

The board's multi-chassis bus includes a total of 2,423 time-slots, allowing up to 1,211 full duplex connections between either local or off-site locations. The board uses an OC3 fiber-optic ring to connect between two and five chassis, which can be up to 2,000 meters apart. Driver support for Windows 2000, NT, Unixware, SCO Unix, and Linux is available. The UltraLite board is compatible with other XDS and H.100 compliant products, and it will even work with MVIP or SCSA boards with an XDS H.100-to-MVIP or H.100-to-SCSA interface connection.

Anyuser.com's Gatekeeper Service for ITSPs and Businesses

Anyuser.com (Cerritos, CA - 562-865-2666) has a well-rounded suite of services for consumers and businesses looking to do IP telephony. They also support channel partners (e.g., ITSPs) looking for a structured, turnkey IP telephony offering with global connectivity; as well as telcos looking to provide "IP Centrex." Anyuser provides H.323 gatekeeper/softswitch feature service, online IP device number-registration, translation and routing services, billing and online bill-presentment, yellow pages and voice services, and other IP-side services to telcos, ITSPs, enterprises and consumers, on an ASP basis. They work with partners to provide managed bandwidth between endpoints, and coordinate gateway handoff facilities in local calling areas.

Other partners supply IP telephones and appliances, plus hardware for implementing IP telephony behind HomePNA and similar network types. There's no aspect of the IP telephony equation these folks haven't got a structured answer for. And they know how to run an IP telephony network, too - we tested their network in several different topologies (IP phone to IP phone, IP phone to PSTN phone, PSTN-to-IP-to-PSTN, etc.) and can well believe their claims of MOS quality scores of 3.9 and better (regular PSTN is 4.0).

APPRO Squeezes Storage, Processing Power

APPRO International (Milpitas, CA - 408-941-8100) has somehow managed to take the storage and processing power normally found in a 4U-high, 19-inch rackmount and squeeze it down into their APRE-2003HX-1 2U server. APPRO took the lead at the dawn of the "pizza box" era and they continue to surprise us with their ingenious designs.

The APRE-2003HX-1 sports dual 1GHz Pentium III CPUs, a 400 Watt redundant hot-swappable power supply, and a hot-swappable SCSI hard drive back panel plane supporting up to six devices, each with up to a 160 MBps transfer rate. An internal riser card supports up to four full-length, 64-bit, 33 MHz PCI cards. Supports include Red Hat Linux, Windows NT Server 4.0, Windows 2000 Server, and Windows 2000 Advance Server.

Apropos Unlocks the Interaction Vault

Apropos (Oakbrook Terrace, IL - 630-472-9600) took the wraps off its Interaction Vault at the show, giving us a new angle on the much-vaunted 360-degree view of the customer. With iVault, every interaction with a customer is archived. Thereafter, extensive search capabilities allow contact center agents and supervisors to immediately view the entire history of any interaction based on date, time, or business data. It's the perfect thing for companies not sold on the expense of high-end CRM solutions, that nevertheless want to be able to keep tabs on what they've been telling their customers. The iVault, which is browser-based, is part of Apropos' larger Multimedia Interaction Suite.

APW's 21-Slot StealthBridge

Pushing CompactPCI engineering to the limit, APW Electronic Solutions (Milwaukee, WI - 262-523-7600) showed off their StealthBridge, a new bus bridging method of cPCI that allows backplanes to be populated with lots of cPCI plug-in boards and I/O expansion cards. Why "StealthBridge?" Because of its electronically "invisible" design. With a StealthBridge backplane, a single 19-inch subrack can contain 21 cPCI cards and a full complement of rear-mounted I/O transition cards - a gain of two or more slots per system. This may not sound like much until you realize that two slots could mean eight more T1 lines or 256 full duplex phone lines.

When using a 66 MHz cPCI bus (instead of a typical 33 MHz bus) the gain in slots is more significant, because till now there's been a five-slot limit at this speed. On a StealthBridge backplane, however, a full 21 slots can be achieved using multiple bridges.

Aravox's Chink in the VOIP Firewall

Aravox's (Arden Hills, MN - 651-256-2700) VoiceShield solves the problem that stops a lot of VoIP clients cold in enterprise environments: firewalls that halt all streaming media. Usually, using a VoIP client from a firewall-protected network requires a port to be opened for an indeterminate period, leaving the firewall riddled with holes and the network exposed. VoiceShield dynamically opens and closes ports on a per-call basis under control of the gatekeeper, proxy server, or softswitch.

VoiceShield consists of a high-performance firewall and dynamic NAT, and acts as a Layer Four switch, sorting emails and ftp traffic (then routed to traditional firewalls) from voice. Their own packet control language, plus hardware acceleration, manages this trick without imposing unacceptable latency on voice streams. They are deployed at the major carrier Level 3, and are expanding their pitch from carriers to enterprises.

AudioCodes' Media Processing to Enhance VoIP Networks

AudioCodes (San Jose, CA - 408-577-0488) which has gained the largest single share of the VoIP compression-and-packetization market in its gateway chips, modules, and boards, is now going after the media processing piece of the puzzle with the IPMedia launch. First in this series, announced for beta at CT Expo, is the IPM128-cPCI media processing board. Supporting TDM T1s and IP traffic feature for feature, it makes voice processing available to all ports at once. So carriers can implement an IPMedia-based voice server before, during, or after a migration to IP, and use it all the while to support all the popular enhanced services, from call recording, conferencing, and unified messaging to conferencing and IVR.

The IPM128 supports 128 channels of media processing: The basic configuration includes dual 100-based packet interface and H.110 for TDM-based NICs. IPMedia boards can be controlled locally through a host application or over the net using the IP-based API. Providers can connect an IPMedia-based platform to the PSTN through an AudioCodes media gateway. Partnerships with middleware vendors permit integration and aggregation of multiple media applications with the single-board platform.

Axiom's 3-in-1U Internet Server

Question: How do you fit three PCs into a 19-inch wide rackmount space that's 1U in height? Answer: Make them so small that they can fit side by side. Axiom (City of Industry, CA - 626-581-3232) has done just that with their AX6113 3-in-1U Internet Server, fitting 126 separate systems in a standard seven-foot rack. Each little system, not much bigger than a brick, has a thumbscrew design for tool-free entry. Each unit runs on a Pentium III "flip chip" with a 133 MHz front side bus. One 168-pin DIMM socket holds up to 512 MB of SDRAM.

Two bus mastering ATA-33/66 EIDE channels allow for a total of four devices. One 3.5-inch drive bay is provided for IDE, along with one slim-line CD-ROM. There are two USB connectors, and the usual I/O ports for serial, parallel, and 10/100BaseT Ethernet.

Blue Silicon is a UC ASP

Blue Silicon (San Jose, CA - 408-954-8000) is a Unified Communications ASP for enterprise clients. They install a remote-managed IVR box at your premise and integrate it with your PBX on spare analog or digital line ports (over 90 PBXs are supported, plus Centrex, and new integrations are easy to develop). The box does the heavy lifting associated with the voice part of auto-attendant/voicemail in a legacy telephony environment: It answers calls, plays menus, records messages, signals the switch to transfer calls, etc. Messages are then passed over an IP pipe to an LDAP-compatible message store at Blue Silicon's facility. This message store is also populated by inbound integrations to email, by inbound faxes sent to your private Blue Silicon fax number, etc., and served by infrastructure for outbound notification, paging, wireless device connection, and web. Upshot: You get enterprise-class (as opposed to web-based, Net-only "consumer class") integrated voice, fax, and email messaging without the pain of owning and managing UM CPE and an integrated message store. You can access your messages from anywhere, on a range of devices. And you can pay for it by the month (traffic-based schemes are also available).

Brooktrout Holds All Calls

Although Brooktrout's (Needham, MA - 781-449-4100) TR1000 is not a new product, we think a media server that can handle 3.8 million calls per hour deserves a Best of Show award. The TRxStream TR1000 is targeted to service providers (Lucent Technologies uses it) and other "heavy-hitters," and at CT Expo, demonstrated its capacity to deliver. With a dual T3 (1,344 ports) system in a single CompactPCI shelf, it processed 3.8 million calls per hour, while using only 38% of the CPU's capacity. And although call density is an important feature for SPs, it can't overshadow the importance of reliability. The TR1000 passed this test, too, running at high-call-density levels for two consecutive weeks without system resets or operator intervention. Check out the white paper posted on Brooktrout's website for detailed test results. The TR 1000 supports from 24 to 96 simultaneous voice sessions, and up to eight sessions of intelligent fax. It runs on PCI or cPCI. And Brooktrout is partnering with Nuance to deliver speech recognition in second quarter of this year.

Cisco Turns Heads with Turnkey CTI Suite

Building on its IP Contact Center and Intelligent Contact Management platforms, Cisco (San Jose, CA - 408-526-7208) released the Turnkey CTI Suite at this Spring's CT Expo, adding an important component to its product line and signaling a greater focus on small- and medium-sized call centers. According to Cisco, the majority of demand for CTI capabilities is among call centers with 40 to 100 agents. With Turnkey CTI, Cisco offers this market a set of off-the-shelf desktop apps like screen pops, workflow automation, and soft phone capabilities, and also supplies development and integration tools at both the desktop and the server levels. They're working with CRM vendors, in particular, to deploy their products over Cisco's network-based call routing platform, the ICM.

The CTI suite's client and server modules fit seamlessly with contact centers built on Cisco's IPCC model - which includes intelligent routing, IVR, and IP-based call switching - but also works with legacy ACD and call center systems. With the Turnkey CTI Suite, Cisco solidifies its position in the contact center market, and extends its capabilities from the core of the enterprise network to the agents' and administrators' desktops.

CityNet's HomePNA Solutions for Hotels/MCUs/BLECs/SPs

HomePNA is the hot new multi-vendor standard for medium-speed data networking over standard, two-conductor twisted pair wiring. Because it's back-compatible with existing building and residential phone cabling, it's likely to play an important role in provider plans for wiring up hotels, apartment complexes, institutions, small business facilities, and homes. CityNet Telecommunications (Monrovia, CA - 626-599-8556) is ready to connect you to HomePNA - offering a range of well-engineered, scalable, rack switching gear; small port-count local hubs; and individual device interfaces for PCs, phones, and other equipment.

A single 1412 rack unit (one of many products they offer) accepts up to three 100BaseT network connections, and serves up to 12 homes or offices with HomePNA data service at close to 1 Mbps. Regular 1412 units can be daisy chained on the fourth 100BaseT network interface, and slaved to a 1412M management unit (another 12 ports, plus additional brains) for central monitoring and remote configuration down to the port level, using a web client. Interconnection with telco wiring is simple: Just punch down pairs from the device to pairs at the demarc - the electrical connection is transparent to the serving telco. They say wiring a typical hotel, with several hundred units, only takes a few hours. Upstairs in the office suite, multiport Ethernet hubs and individual device interfaces pull the HomePNA data off the phone wiring and translate it to standard Ethernet. Your standard telephone equipment, meanwhile, is completely blind to the whole affair.

Clearcube's C/Port

ClearCube (Austin, TX - 888-266-8115) shook up the world of call center hardware management with their C3 architecture, which allows standard Cat 5 wire to carry a mixture of video, audio, keystrokes, and mouse click signals from the desktop to a ClearCube Blade (shoebox-sized computer) up to 200 meters (656 feet) away.

At CT Expo 2001, ClearCube unveiled their C/Port, which now allows serial information to travel 200 meters, too. You can now sync up with your Palm Pilot from your workstation, even though your computer is sitting in a rack with 96 or so others.

CML Versatel's TotalAgility Maximizes Voice Resources

CML Versatel's (Hull, QU, Canada - 819-771-0011) TotalAgility Platform is a programmable switch that employs a unique architecture to achieve higher density and greater utilization of DSP resources than most systems of its kind. CML's core hardware component is the Sweet16 T1 card, a CompactPCI card that supports up to 16 T1s, and contains on-board DSP resources for functions like conferencing, tone generation, and tone detection. Up to eleven Sweet16s (4,096 ports) can be packed into a single chassis with a total system density reaching upwards of 64,000 ports, by networking chassis together. TotalAgility Mesoware, a middleware layer, mediates between the hardware resources and the CTI applications designed to run on top of TotalAgility. Mesoware exposes the hardware, signaling, and call control through standard, open APIs like TAPI and VERSIT, and also offers links to management and configuration systems via SNMP and SQL. TotalAgility distinguishes itself by separating T1 network interfaces from the underlying DSP resources, and allowing each to act as resource pools. Incoming calls are aggregated over a common and fixed number of T1s, which in turn connect to the DSPs to access media processing resources. DSPs can be added without necessarily adding more network interfaces. In its next generation of products, CML plans an even more attractive proposition by moving media functions onto host processors, and connecting all hardware and software components across IP with fast Ethernet links.

Commetrex' Marriage of T.30 and T.38

A surprising number of ISPs and developers have difficulty building terminating-fax service platforms for IP networks. Circuit-switched providers have long implemented multi-line fax boards running the T.30 terminating-fax protocol, while in the IP world the T.38 real-time IP fax relay protocol is found on embedded resources in PSTN-IP gateways. But in a fully converged network, there's a need to efficiently combine the previously separate functions of the gateway and the service platform node, creating a need for terminating faxes to and from an IP network.

To solve this problem, Commetrex (Norcross, GA - 770-449-7775) announced "the newlyweds," a successful integration of both T.30 and T.38. It can run on whatever embedded resource is present in a system or directly on the gateway-service platform's host. Indeed, Commetrex told us that they think the host processor is, in many ways, better suited to handle the processing needs of both of these protocols.

Connected Systems' iConnectMail ties PBX to Outsourced Service

IConnectMail, from Connected Systems (Santa Barbara, CA - 805-962-5066) is a solid-state "lite" unified messaging appliance for SMBs. With included auto attendant, it's given voice "brick"-based products some competition, but Connected Systems wants to double or triple the threat. They hope to do this by hooking up their CPE box to OpenWave's (formerly software.com's) IP-enabled ASP unified messaging offering. Because media storage, as well as LDAP interface and SMTP mail store is now on the service provider side, Dwight Buck, CEO, likes to call the system a "Cable TV setup box for a PBX." The voice- and email message integration is still presented through an MS Exchange GUI. An ISP, for example, can now provision UM without investing in voice resources on the network side.

Looking ahead a little, consider that you now have a little SMB-sized VRU sitting off a PBX station side, and an Ethernet IP connection to the provider. This means you have the means for all sorts of switch-integrated applications, including (with the PBX-Link digital station-set emulator that Connected Systems acquired from Calista) out-of-band desktop call control and ASP- or LAN-supplied screen pop! The service-provider proposition calls for equipping subscribers the with the iConnectMail platform; $3,295 for four ports, serves up to 75 users, says Buck. It has a canned library of 150 PBXes and can "learn" DTMF signaling of others.

Crystal Group Patrols with DarkSite

Crystal Group (Hiawatha, IA - 319-378-1636) unveiled a versatile remote management appliance for servers called DarkSite. DarkSite can monitor the health of servers and notify you of potential problems before they cause an application to fail. DarkSite lets you choose which hardware and software systems (CPUs, RAM, disk drives, network connections, etc.) to monitor and how users will be notified (email, wireless alert messages to a PDA, pager, or cellular phone). DarkSite can send SNMP trap signaling as well.

DarkSite is actually a complete embedded computer system, with its own OS and Crystal's own server management software application. It runs independently from the host system. Interestingly, it has an ISA bus connector on the top and a PCI bus connector on the bottom, so by flipping it, you can insert the card in either type of PC. It runs under Windows 95/98, NT 4.0, Linux, Solaris x86, and SCO (Calera) UnixWare 7.x.

CSS Labs' ProARRAY 2

CSS Labs (Irvine, CA - 949-852-8161), masters of high-density storage, have scored another hit with their new ProARRAY 2 RAID storage subsystem, a 4U, 19-inch rackmount that holds 15 1-inch-high hot-swappable SCA2 SCSI drives (each having a transfer rate of up to 160 MBps). The drives can be configured as one array or three 5-bay modules, each with a single connecting backplane consisting of five 80-pin connectors. Total storage capacity: an incredible 1.1 terabytes.

Three internal hot-swap chassis fans keep the ProARRAY 2 cool. The system is powered by dual redundant, hot-swappable, 250 Watt, auto-sensing power supplies in an ATX PS/2 form factor.

Dialogic/Intel's Converged Communications Platform (ICCP) and CT Media Middleware

Dialogic/Intel (Parsippany, NJ - 973-993-3000) used this year's show to unveil the ICCP, a switch and media processor in one productized platform. Standards-based and open, the Intel Converged Communications Platform (ICCP) lets ISVs build applications that can be deployed on either circuit-switched or IP networks - or both. The biggest pitch: consolidating applications from multiple vendors, such as unified messaging and voice-activated dialers, onto a single system with pooled telephony resources. Thus, small- to medium-sized businesses can now rapidly upgrade and/or expand their communications infrastructure whenever the need arises.

The ICCP runs the new version 2.1 of Dialogic CT Media middleware. Dialogic offers both the CT Media 2.1 Software Development Kit and Resource Development Kit (RDK) at no charge.

DSG's InterPBX does MGCP/SIP

Thank you! About time somebody came out with an IP PBX based around a SIP proxy server. DSG Technology (Walnut, CA - 909-595-8908) looks to be first-to-market with their MGCP/SIP-based, distributed IP PBX/Gateway architecture and complementary (and beautifully designed) MGCP/SIP phones. Multi-location enterprises (and perhaps some ASPs) will warm to DSG's NeuralServer architecture, in which a network of InterPBX proxies cooperate to deliver service transparently to endpoints, and provide software-level failover and traffic rerouting in the event of individual server failure. The basic proxy, called InterSwitch, runs on an NT or Linux box. It cooperates with low-to-high density gateways (IP 1000-3000) for PSTN handoff. DSG makes a superior key telephone for the system (InterPhone), plus an IP-base-station-to-wireless handset version, a softphone, and a PC VoIP adapter as well. Analog adapters hook up your legacy phones. There's even a soft attendant console.

Elix' OPUS Maestro 2000 is S.100 Compatible

Elix (Nuns' Island, QU, Canada - 514-768-1000) - the Mediasoft/Prima fusion - showed the latest version of OPUS Maestro; demonstrating compatibility of the 2000 edition with S.100 R2 servers such as CT Media and Brooktrout's RealComm 100. Applications composed with OPUS Maestro 2000 can now be compiled to run on Intel/Dialogic or Brooktrout hardware platforms. The few adjustments necessary are handled mostly by #IFDEFs in header files. Other enhancements to the platform include Windows 2000 support, and a new version for Windows NT4. Support for Nuance revision 7.0 speech recognition and revision 2.0 voice verification are also now available. OPUS Maestro 2000 is priced at around $400 (U.S.) per port, and is available now.

ELMA's CPCI Chassis Under the SUN

Elma Electronic (Fremont, CA - 510-656-3400) was showing off its new three-slot CompactPCI 19-inch chassis for the SUN OS and processor. To give the unit a low stacking profile, the system accepts 6U cPCI boards horizontally. The system can be powered by SUN CP1400 or CP1500 SBCs, and has such hot-pluggable features as two fans, dual SCSI drives housed in SUN-compatible drive carriers, and dual 150W redundant power supplies.

Unlike most other NEBS-compliant cPCI chassis, Elma's cooling system uses two 50 CFM fans sitting at the front and rear. An optional monitoring system for DC voltages, fan failure, and temperature conditions is available. Best of all, this fault-resilient system is priced under $2,000.

Ericsson's Solidus eCare: Customer Contact for the Mobile Enterprise

Ericsson Enterprise (Menlo Park, CA - 324-6100) has made a number of important enhancements and additions to its product line recently, but perhaps none as significant as the release of Solidus eCare, a customer contact center platform with integrated VoIP and web capabilities. Solidus works in both legacy voice environments as well as on next-gen, IP-based networks, uniting multiple different, and previously disparate, communications channels into a single interface. Skills-based and customer profile-based routing is applied regardless of medium, and all client interfaces support remote workers.

Ericsson already has customers deploying the software in a variety of modes. Solidus eCare becomes particularly powerful when seen in context of other developments within Ericsson Enterprise. At CT Expo, for instance, the company showed its new line of IP phones, the Dialog 3413, along with a new release of its MD110 PBX, which now supports both VoIP and wireless integration.

Exacom Lends EARS to Desktop Voice Recording

Exacom (Concord, NH - 603-228-0706) played a new and different trick in the call recording niche by pushing the process to the edge of the network. With its EXACOM Archival Recording System (that's EARS, for your acronym fanciers), the company has introduced the concept of "point of recording" solutions for multi-site customers. Got reps spread out in onesies and twosies? Put a device about the size of a notebook computer's external drive under their desks, plug it serially into the phone line, and likewise into the existing desktop network connection. (The two RJ-45s in the back of the unit are actually an Ethernet hub, so this "pass-through" trick works and you don't have to add a second Ethernet drop.) The unit records 10 GB of voice and FTPs it up to your central recording system (from Exacom or others) at intervals you determine - complete with load management to avoid overwhelming your anemic branch-office Internet connection.

Eyretel's Replay Studio Speaks Volumes Graphically

Eyretel (Surrey, U.K.: - 44-870-6000-626, U.S.: 301-586-1900) brings data analytics to the call recording industry with its new Replay Studio. Loudly colored graphs show each call coded by type (request for info, customer complaint, product line, and so on) and arranged on a grid by length. Look at one of these displays, though, and suddenly you notice that Sally handles old product calls very quickly, whereas everyone else takes forever. The picture doesn't give you everything you want to know (maybe Sally's brilliant, or maybe she transfers the calls to other reps because she knows nothing about the old products), but you can drill down on any call, listen to the archived recording, and take it from there.

Genesys Makes Contact: G6 Internet Contact

Genesys (San Francisco, CA - 415-437-1100) made a splash last fall announcing Version 6 of its G6 complete contact center suite, and has since backed up its claims with individual product releases. The company rounded out G6 with the release of Internet Contact 6.0, one of the platform's most crucial components, at this year's CT Expo. Internet Contact applies Genesys' Universal Queue model to multiple incoming media, including email, chat, web callback, and VoIP. New features in G6 more tightly integrate these various channels. For example, agents can now handle multiple chat sessions simultaneously, and also "transfer" a live chat session, along with customer data, to other agents or supervisors. G6 Internet Contact has also added web-based forms as a new interaction type, and a way to cut down on email traffic in the contact center. By structuring customer input data up front, and applying standard skills-based routing and queuing methods, web forms can be handled more quickly and efficiently than email. G6 also includes enhanced agent/customer collaboration features, like co-browsing and forms sharing, to assist in e-commerce transactions.

Gold Systems Hooks IVR to Web Apps

Gold Systems' (Boulder, CO - 303-447-2774) Vonetix 2.1 offers a valuable service - hooking IVR platforms to the preexisting business logic of web applications, instead of writing the voice application from scratch. Vonetix 2.1 relies on Java-based architecture, with XML/HTML/ XHTML connectivity for the web and a JDBC plug-in for database systems such as Oracle, Sybase, IBM DB2, and the MS SQL server. A WAP plug-in enables alert messages. Future plans include plug-ins for ERP and CRM packages. The future speech channel will link speech recognition technologies. Its application channel, also in the works, will support VoiceXML and an application creation API in Java. Vonetix 2.1 ships standard on Avaya's Conversant IVR platform, and Cisco is next.

Vonetix capabilities will be further expanded through a full suite of popular connectivity plug-ins to support standards such as CORBA and .NET, as well as enterprise software packages such as Siebel, PeopleSoft, and SAP.

iAmigo's Turnkey Notification Server

Notification - by beeper, wireless, phone call, email, etc. - will drive the next big wave in e-commerce and mobile commerce. It's a necessary technology for all sorts of applications - from stock trading to device management. Proactive notification systems eliminate the need to "call in and check status," so reduce call center and website traffic.

When linked to transaction processing, notification can even stimulate sales.

The thing is - people want to be notified on all sorts of devices, connected to all sorts of networks. But application makers don't want to master all these technologies to offer a comprehensive set of notification options. Enter iAmigo (Reston, VA - 703-476-4990), and their turnkey notification server. Running NT or Unix (Solaris, HP-UX, SCO), the notification server accepts Notification Markup Language input from applications, presents it to an input parser, subjects the semantically normalized input to processing by an application template (coded in VoiceXML and iAmigo's own XML extension scripting language), then passes it off to one of a clutch of VRU, WAP, and client application servers, for delivery to a client's preferred endpoint device. Returned results (obtainable from WAP or VRU apps) are renormalized and returned to the calling application. The notification server can access databases to derive client profiles, preferences, and device data, and will populate databases to produce statistics and transaction reports.

IBM's WebSphere Voice Server; Works with Dialogic Portal

IBM (White Plains, NY - 800-825-5263) has broken some important new ground with the development of the WebSphere Voice Server, and its newly announced integration with the Dialogic voice portal architecture represents a major step forward for the industry. WebSphere Voice Server offers developers a more standardized and flexible environment in which to integrate web content with telephony infrastructure. Using technologies such as speech recognition, for example, businesses can begin to expose web-based content to customers over the phone, as an enhancement to traditional IVR systems.

Already, IBM has integrated WebSphere Voice Server with its own existing IVR platform, Direct Talk, and with a series of Cisco gateways for VoIP environments. Voice portals, which seek to bring the web and the telephone closer together as channels into businesses' data and applications, simply extend this idea, and are being implemented both by service providers and enterprises themselves. The Dialogic Voice Portal provides a reference architecture, based on the company's own telephony hardware, for building voice portals. IBM's product lets developers program speech applications on top of this architecture using VoiceXML (includes a standards-compliant VoiceXML interpreter) and Java, rather than working directly with the Dialogic APIs.

And on the web side, IBM offers similarly tight integration through its WebSphere application server, using it to host VoiceXML sites or to perform the application's business logic independently of presentation method. Yet another product in this family that caught our attention at CT Expo was the new WebSphere Translation Server, which automatically translates chats (as well as emails or entire web pages) on-the-fly, in multiple languages.

I-BUS/PHOENIX' IBC 2602 Peripheral Master CPU Board

Need to corral the processing power of seven CPU boards into a single CompactPCI system? At CT Expo, I-Bus/Phoenix (San Diego, CA - 858-503-3000) offered the new IBC 2602, 6U Single-Slot cPCI Peripheral Master CPU board. Through an Intel 21554 non-transparent bridge, the IBC 2602 can be used as a peripheral master board, allowing up to seven IBC 2602's to sit in a CompactPCI system (I-Bus/Phoenix makes these too).

The IBC 2602 can hold Mobile Intel Pentium III processors running up to 700 MHz. Up to 512 MB of SDRAM and 128 MB of CompactFlash can also be placed on board. There's also dual 10/100BaseTX Ethernet, PMC expansion (to accommodate such things as Ultra-SCSI or Fiber Channel), and AGP Video.