Position Paper

Nortel Networks

Seven myths and misconceptionsabout IP contact centersWhat every contact center manager should know about the cost-cutting, productivity,

and performance advantages of IP—and how to get there without overhauling the

communications infrastructure.

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Contents

Executive summary 3

Voice over IP grows up 3

What is an IP contact center? 4

What are the benefits of an IP contact center? 4

Customer case—Carlson Wagonlit Travel has no reservations about IP 6

What type of enterprise would benefit from an IP contact center? 6

Customer case—Swiss canton bank counts on IP contact center 7

Seven myths and misconceptions about IP contact centers 7

IP Contact Center Myth #1—“The telecom and applications infrastructure isn’t ready.” 7

IP Contact Center Myth #2—”I’ll have to abandon current investments in conventional ACD and PBX systems.” 7

IP Contact Center Myth #3—“Voice over IP is all about saving toll charges.” 8

IP Contact Center Myth #4—“Customers will perceive call quality—and our image—as inferior.” 8

IP Contact Center Myth #5—“IP contact centers won’t have features equivalent to traditional call centers.” 8

IP Contact Center Myth #6—“Opening the data network to customer contact will jeopardize security.” 9

IP Contact Center Myth #7—“Standards flux will cause interoperability issues.” 9

What are the components of an IP contact center? 10

The client—agent, supervisor, and administrator access devices 10

Media gateways to the legacy world 11

Application servers for IP contact center services 11

Call control servers—the arbiters and traffic cops of an IP contact center 11

How is an IP contact center implemented? 12

IP-enabled contact centers—the evolutionary approach 12

Pure-IP contact centers—the revolutionary approach 12

Deployment choice 13

Nortel Networks and IP contact centers 13

References 14

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Executive summaryVoice over IP (VoIP) has come a longway since the first rudimentary applica-tions provided erratic yet free phonecalls over the unmanaged, open Web.Today, the maturity of VoIP standardsand quality of service (QoS) on IP networks opens up new possibilities for contact center applications.

Placing contact center services on aconverged voice/data infrastructure canmaximize network efficiency, streamlinenetwork architecture, reduce capitaland operating costs, and enable newservice options.

An “IP contact center” leverages IP tooperate contact center services on a con-verged voice and data infrastructure. Itmight be an “IP-enabled” version of aconventional circuit-switched call cen-ter, using existing PBX and automatedcall distribution (ACD) systems whiletaking advantage of cost-effective, efficient IP links to connect agents andbranch offices. Or it might be a “pure-IP” contact center built completely onIP-based components, including agentaccess devices, application servers, IP call control servers, and gatewaymediation devices that interface withtraditional telephone services.

In addition to the obvious cost-savingsadvantages of a converged voice anddata network, IP contact centers offerthe exciting option to locate agents in“virtual call centers” just about any-where, without incurring toll charges.Recruiters can draw from labor pools inlower-cost markets or wherever theneeded skills can be found. Work-at-home options can reduce absenteeismand turnover by as much as 50 percent.

And, naturally, enter-prises save signifi-cant facilities costsfor real estate,lighting, heat, etc.

Sounds great,right? But sevenprevailing mythsand misconceptionsinhibit many contactcenter directors from consid-ering IP and enjoying these benefits.This white paper looks at each one of those myths, examines the currentreality behind those myths—and offersintelligent deployment options thatenable enterprises to embrace IP in theway that best suits their existing infra-structure and unique business case.

We know the scene. In 30 years, NortelNetworks has established more than35,000 customer contact centers inmore than 100 countries, supportingmore than three and a half millionagent positions. We’re also a globalleader in developing IP networks thatprovide secure, reliable, voice-grade service. Who better to help your enter-prise evolve or create an IP-empoweredcontact center?

Nortel Networks offers both an evolutionary, hybrid approach tocreating IP contact centers, anda revolutionary, all-IPapproach. With either strategy,the Nortel Networks solutionprovides the investment pro-tection, deployment simplicity,and feature richness of our provenMeridian-based systems—along with the cost-saving, performance, and productivity advantages of IP.

Voice over IPgrows upThe first widely-used Voice over IP applicationsappeared in the

mid-‘90s, with rudi-mentary services that

enabled Internet users to make free voice calls

between specially equipped PCs,or between a regular phone and a specially-equipped PC. Even though quality wasoften erratic, users found this earlyVoice over IP technology a great way tosave toll charges on long-distance andinternational calls.

Voice over IP (VoIP) has come a longway since then. For one, voice qualityon managed IP networks (controlledInternet backbones or an enterprise’sprivate network) can emulate that of thepublic voice network. Newer voicecodecs (coders/decoders) typically useless bandwidth—consuming only 8 kbpsto produce acceptable voice quality,compared to 64 kbps with traditionalISDN lines.

The maturity of VoIP standards andquality of service (QoS) on IP networksopens up new possibilities for contact

center applications. Placing contact center services on a

converged voice/data infra-structure maximizes networkefficiency, streamlines net-work architecture, reduces

capital and operating costs, and opens up new service options.

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Leveraging IP in the contact centermakes it cost-effective to locate agents inbranch offices and home offices, withconnectivity to the contact center overcost-effective IP links—and makes iteasy to deploy and reconfigure service tomeet fluctuations in demand, such asfor seasonal business needs. IP enablesnew multimedia service opportunities,such as Web-enabled multimedia contact centers, unified messaging, andremote Web-based contact center management and reporting.

In fact, the demand for IP is so strongthat InfoTech3 estimates 46 percent ofcall center agent seats will be based onmulti-channel IP platform technologyby 2004.

Companies are excited about the poten-tial that IP brings to their business, andmost decision-makers today are notdetermining if they will leverageInternet Telephony in their contact centers, but rather when and how theywill make it happen.

What is an IP contact center?Voice over IP (VoIP) refers to two-waytransmission of voice traffic over a packet-switched IP (Internet Protocol) network—either a private enterprise intranet orWAN, or a public carrier network or theInternet. The terms “IP telephony” and“Internet telephony” generally refer toVoice over IP services transported over apublic Internet backbone, but all threeterms are often used interchangeably.

An “IP contact center,” then, is one thatleverages IP to operate its services on aconverged voice and data infrastructure.The degree to which the contact centerrelies on IP can vary from one imple-mentation to another. In its lightest

form, an IP contact center uses its exist-ing PBX and automated call distribution(ACD) systems and takes advantage of cost-effective, efficient IP links toconnect agents. A fully developed IPcontact center is built completely on IP-based components, including agentaccess devices, application servers, andgateway mediation devices that interfacewith devices and customers that use traditional telephone services.

What are the benefits of anIP contact center?Enhancing a contact center with VoIPcapabilities—or implementing all contact center operations on an IP infrastructure—offers several importantbusiness benefits:

Reduce network equipment and oper-ating costs. If your organization alreadyhas an IP network, you can maximizeyour investment by converging voiceand data on that infrastructure. If you’reestablishing a new contact center, youcan deploy a single, converged networkwith one wire to the desktop and uni-fied management—instead of disparatevoice and data networks, with their dif-ferent lines, jacks, equipment, manage-ment systems, and support specialists.

Naturally, this type of consolidationtranslates to increased network efficiency,lower training and personnel costs, andremote management through a singleinterface. A converged network is considerably easier and less expensive to manage.

Reduce toll costs. For internationaloperations and inbound 800-numbertraffic especially, IP can generate signifi-cant cost savings compared to circuit-switched voice services. Furthermore,

Improve service, reduce

operating costs, and simplify

management and administra-

tion by leveraging IP in your

contact centers.

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whereas traditional telephony servicesare priced per minute, VoIP services(such as those offered via cable modemand DSL) are generally priced on a flat rate. Transforming a key cost component from a variable to a fixedcost greatly improves cost managementand forecasting.

Reduce capital costs.Whether expand-ing an existing facility or building new centers, IP can be less expensive thancircuit-based solutions. For example,agents can be equipped with PCs withheadphones, rather than a dedicatedbusiness phone plus a PC, therebyreducing equipment costs per agent seat.In cases where all agent devices are IP-enabled devices, the conventional PBXcan be eliminated altogether.

Locate agents anywhere. Cost-effectiveIP communication links (usually withno toll charges) make it feasible to locateagents in “virtual call centers” thatinclude branch offices and home officesjust about anywhere. The latest IPremote office solutions make it mucheasier to work with remote agents andwill likely spur greater acceptance of thisvariant on telecommuting.

Reduce agent costs. Indirectly, IPenables contact centers to reduce personnel costs in terms of salaries,turnover, and support. For one, theoption to locate agents anywhere enablesrecruiters to draw from labor pools inlower-cost markets—for instance, inrural areas. IP virtual contact centersmay still require a centralized headquarteroffice for management, training facili-ties, and equipment, but using remoteagents can save significant facilitiescosts, such as floor space, heat, andlighting. Work-at-home options

contribute to the second-largest cost sav-ings of IP contact centers: a 50 percentreduction in turnover and absenteeism,according to Forrester Research.

Improve agent quality and satisfactionwhile reducing costs. The flexibility towork at home or close to home makes iteasier to recruit and retain employees—especially if specific skill sets such as language or technical knowledge arerequired—and meet the needs of a geographically dispersed workforce.

Provide a seamless user experience.Remote agents and branch offices canbe linked to the same contact centerapplication used in the main contactcenter. Whether your agents are locatedat an Omaha contact center hub or intheir rural home offices, customers andsuppliers receive the same level of per-sonal service and are unaware of any disparity in physical location.

Easily support peak loads and 24/7service. By dynamically distributing callsamong agents in many locations andtime zones, contact center managers cansupport extended business hours and dra-matic shifts in demand at far less expense.This flexibility helps attract and retaincustomers by making it easier to do busi-ness with you, any way and any time.

Extend services to internal users any-where. Running voice over your existingenterprise IP network (and/or virtualprivate network across the publicInternet) enables you to cost-effectively,

easily extend contact center applications,including reporting and administration,to employees and managers locatedalmost anywhere.

Streamline contact center manage-ment. Web browsers can be used toconnect with all of your contact centermanagement, administrative, andreporting tools from virtually anywhere.Centralized management of call centerapplications reduces administration andmaintenance costs.

Adjust and expand to meet fluctuat-ing requirements. By definition, IP ishighly scalable and flexible. The ubiqui-ty of IP services means that almost anyhome or branch office can become anextension of the IP contact center, withonly minor investments in IP accessdevices and interfaces. Contact centermanagers can therefore add agents when-ever needed to meet seasonable businessrequirements or new promotions.Capitalizing on the reach of the Internet,contact centers can be easily set up anddismantled for transient requirements.

Provide carrier-grade reliability. IPnetworks have matured to the pointwhere they can offer the availability andreliability expected for customer-facingvoice communications. With some solu-tions, IP contact centers can be engi-neered for survivable local calling capa-bility and automatic fallback to the pub-lic switched telephone network (PSTN),if necessary to maintain quality of service.

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Converge channels and services.Placing voice and data on the same network opens up new possibilities forconverging the many ways in which customers communicate with your orga-nization—voice, text, chat, e-mail, fax,and Web co-browsing. Click to callfrom a Web site, for instance. Or “push”Web pages to a caller to provide moreinformation. Or have custom screenpops on the agent’s PC delivered overthe same line as the voice call.

Voice is still the dominant channel forproviding contact center service, butcustomers are growing more conditionedto multi-channel communication, andthe ability to meet that expectation—akey strength of IP—is becoming a keydifferentiator, according to ForresterResearch1. IP is clearly the future forconverged, multi-channel communica-tion, since it unifies all interaction typesonto one infrastructure for routing,application access, and reporting.

Support future high-end applications.The traditional telephone network can’tsupport bandwidth-intensive applica-tions, such as streaming video. Video is not widely used by contact centerstoday, but as broadband access becomesmainstream, customers could soonexpect to be able to view contact agents,interactive product demos, or informa-tional broadcasts as part of their onlineexperience. With adequate network performance, IP contact centers couldreadily support such high-end services—simply not feasible on the PSTN.

In short, the business case makes sense.Enterprises can save pennies per agent/minute, translating into annual savingsin the hundreds of thousands or millionsof dollars, according to a November2001 Forrester Research report1. IP contact centers deliver flexibility and

functionality to help businesses handlecustomer contact needs more efficientlyand effectively, resulting in stronger,more profitable relationships.

What type of enterprise would benefit from an IP contact center?An ideal candidate for an IP contactcenter is a medium to large enterprisethat must connect with agents who arespread across multiple sites or remoteoffices. Small to medium companiesestablishing new sites or expandingoperations are also likely beneficiaries.IP contact centers are suitable for almostany business environment, but thegreatest interest has come from educa-tion, high technology, manufacturing,and retail vertical markets.

Introducing IP into contact center operations would be a good idea forany organization that meets any of these criteria:

• The organization needs a cost-effec-tive, flexible way to extend contactcenter applications to agents workingat branch offices or at home.

• Due to multiple promotional pro-grams or seasonal busy periods, thecontact center experiences a largenumber of moves, adds, and changes.

• The organization wants to unify voiceand data networks to gain the capitalexpenditure savings of reduced equip-ment requirements and the operatingexpense savings of converged manage-ment and administration.

• Contact center operations must bebased in multiple locations in accor-dance with labor availability, or toprovide coverage for extended hoursor multiple time zones.

Customer caseCarlson Wagonlit Travel has

no reservations about IP

The 50,000 employees of Carlson

Wagonlit Travel manage consolidated

travel reservations for clients throughout

the U.S., Canada, the Caribbean, and

Latin America. Like any travel agency,

the firm faces dramatic fluctuations in

call volumes, from exponential growth

to unexpected slow-downs.

In May 2000, the company’s contact

centers fielded 52,000 calls—exceeding

projections by 60 percent and causing a

call delay of about 6 minutes. Carlson

Wagonlit contact center managers

needed a way to address this issue

quickly, and be up and running with a

new solution within 90 days. After the

company implemented its IP system,

the contact center handled 69,000

calls in one month, with an average

call delay of 52 seconds.

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• Agent turnover is high, and lack oflocal skilled resources makes itextremely difficult to staff adequately.

• Call hold times and abandoned callrates are increasing.

• The organization is expanding inter-nationally or moving contact centeroperations offshore.

• Pressure is mounting to come upwith a flexible disaster recovery oremergency overflow plan.

Seven myths and misconcep-tions about IP contact centersIn spite of the cost savings, productivitygains, and performance merits of IPcontact centers, the technology hasn’tyet been widely deployed. One key rea-son is that many enterprises recentlyupgraded their contact center systems tobe Y2K-ready, and they’re not ready toupgrade again. However, other enter-prises are proceeding cautiously becauseof seven prevalent myths about IP andits value in contact center applications.

IP CONTACT CENTER MYTH #1“The telecom and applications infrastructure isn’t ready.”Call center managers interviewed for aNovember 2001 Forrester Report1

expressed concern that the telecommu-nications infrastructure isn’t up to thechallenge of telephony-grade VoIP andcomputer-telephony integration neces-sary for call center agents to work fromtheir homes or regional satellite centers.They worry that consumer-grade ISPsand spotty high-bandwidth connectivitywill limit agents’ access to customer dataat key moments, agent applicationswon’t be able to traverse corporate fire-walls, and inconsistent voice quality willproject a low-budget image.

It’s true that with mission-critical appli-cations, such as the contact center, com-panies cannot afford to sacrifice qualityor reliability. They must be able to

extend their reach and connect withtheir customers—any way and anytime—while still providing the highestlevel of service. However, the sameForrester report notes that IP network-ing in general and IP contact centertechnology have matured, the softwareis now more stable, and network qualityof service (QoS) mechanisms have beenput into place to resolve many of theoriginal deficiencies of VoIP.

As to “last-mile” communications toremote agents in branch offices andhome offices, a February 2002 reportfrom the Federal CommunicationsCommission4 reported that broadbandservice is available and being used in all50 states and U.S. territories, in 78 per-cent of all the nation’s ZIP codes, in 96percent of the most affluent ZIP codes,in 97 percent of the most populatedZIP codes—and growing at double-digitrates. In a few short years, the 56K dial-up modem line became almostobsolete, supplanted by high-speed DSLand cable modem alternatives that nowserve some 10 million subscribers.

IP CONTACT CENTER MYTH #2“I’ll have to abandon current investments in conventional ACD and PBX systems.”Contact center managers are rightlyconcerned about getting full lifecyclevalue out of their ACD and PBX systems, especially if their operations areprofitable and functioning well withcurrent circuit-switched systems.However, a recent Frost and Sullivanreport2 notes that the need for multi-channel customer support is on the rise,and using remote agents will be key asproblems pertaining to agent recruitingand retention persist. “Contact centersface more risk by staying with the tried-and-tested rather than in exploring IP,”the report notes.

Customer caseSwiss canton

bank counts on

IP contact center

Obwaldner Kantonalbank

(OKB) sought a way to eliminate the

cost of maintaining two separate voice

and data networks across its eight

branches around the region of canton

Obwalden in Switzerland. The bank’s IT

and contact center managers converged

on IP telephony, and implemented a

Succession enterprise IP telephony solu-

tion and IP contact center that would help

reduce costs, increase productivity, and

improve customer service.

They not only converged communication

networks; they converged all communi-

cation tools onto employee PCs equipped

with microphones, headsets, and Nortel

Networks VoIP software—saving desk

space and capital costs by removing

telephones. A total of 130 bank staff

are using PC-based i2050 softphones,

unified messaging, and Microsoft* TAPI

(Telephone Applications Programming

Interface) ‘screen pops’ through their PCs.

As a result, the bank slashed network cost

of ownership, while providing flexibility

and service integration that weren’t

possible with their disparate voice and

data systems.

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As the cost of IP-centric solutions drops,and legacy call centers age, enterpriseswill find little incentive to continueinvesting in circuit-switched technolo-gies that are likely to become obsolete.Contact centers that have plans togrow—whether by adding seats on-site,building new centers, or adding remoteagents—will be better off migrating tothe new, converged IP world.

Nortel Networks offers a wide variety of options that protect your investment,enabling you to IP-enable existing contact centers without overhauling orpurchasing completely new communica-tions infrastructures. You can migrategradually to a hybrid or pure-IP envi-ronment without discontinuity orstranded investment, while extendingthe value of existing circuit-switchedcontact center systems.

IP CONTACT CENTER MYTH #3“Voice over IP is all about savingtoll charges.”“Contrary to initial expectations, savingsin toll costs is not one of the more sig-nificant drivers in this market,” states aFrost and Sullivan report2 on IP contactcenters. In North America, at least, tollrates are low, so toll bypass is not neces-sarily a significant concern. Accordingto InfoTech3, the top reason most man-agers selected a VoIP solution over non-IP technology was the lower expense ofone converged network as opposed toseparate voice and data networks.Another top factor was the lower cost ofmoves, changes, and adds, and the abilityto leverage new IP-based applications.

Voice is still at the heart of the agent/customer relationship, but saving moneyon voice services is but one dimensionin a multi-faceted business case for IP.

“The IP contact center is about commu-nicating with the customer the way customers want to communicate—thismeans real-time, multi-channel commu-nication,” states the Frost and Sullivanreport2. “Voice is the starting point, butthe real value comes from adding theother elements—text chat, e-mail, and co-browsing. This is what solvesproblems and converts indecision into a purchase.”

IP CONTACT CENTER MYTH #4“Customers will perceive call quality—and our image—as inferior.”Many people have a negative perceptionof VoIP because their initial exposurewas with early Internet telephony ser-vices such as Net2Phone andPhoneFree.com, which provided freephone calls over the Web with marginalquality and less than optimal overallexperience. The public Internet could notmeet the stringent requirements of voicetraffic, in terms of latency, jitter, andpacket loss.

However, when VoIP traffic is sent overa privately managed network or con-trolled Internet backbone, these qualityof service issues can be mitigated oreliminated through:

• Engineering to ensure that sufficientbandwidth is available

• Prioritization of voice traffic, usingdata link layer QoS, type of service(ToS), and resource reservation protocol (RSVP)

• Special coding and packet loss con-cealment techniques

In the five years since the first IP con-tact center systems were introduced,vendors have invested considerableR&D into enhancing voice quality.With engineering and QoS measures inplace, users should not experience a dif-ference in voice quality between circuit-switched (conventional) and packet-switched (IP) telephony.

IP CONTACT CENTER MYTH #5"IP contact centers won’t have featuresequivalent to traditional call centers."For some vendors’ implementations, thisis a valid concern. The feature richnessof today’s call control servers from dif-ferent vendors ranges from as little as ahandful of common features, up to fullPBX and ACD equivalence.

For example, one major vendor fromthe data side of the world relies on atechnically immature product that limitsagent functionality to an InCalls Keyand call hold, supports only very basiccall center functions, and doesn’t addresssuch essential capabilities as recordedannouncements and broadcastannouncements.

“While IP contact center technologyoffers the advantages of operational flexi-bility and ease of implementation, vendorsmust ensure that end users are not being forced to compromise in order togain these advantages,” says ForresterResearch1. “Continued product develop-ment is needed so that the expertise ofboth the telephony and data worlds is leveraged.”

Recent advances in IP telephony technology allow the problems initially encountered in VoIP—packet loss, latency, clipped voice, or jitter—to be mitigated.

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To be sure, IP contact centers mustdemonstrate feature parity with tradi-tional contact center solutions. In addi-tion to equivalent reliability, scalability,and voice quality, enterprises will expectsuch capabilities as advanced routing(e.g., skill-based routing across multiplelocations), real-time reporting, agentmanagement tools, and integration withthird-party applications.

These requirements challenge data-cen-tric vendors who are new entrants intothe contact center market. Pure datavendors will be treading new territorywhen trying to offer the capabilities thathave been tablestakes requirements forestablished telephony vendors for decades.

Nortel Networks is the leading globalprovider of contact center solutions—with more than 35,000 contact centersdeployed in enterprises of all sizes. OurIP contact centers use the same provenSymposium applications for both IP-enabled and pure-IP environments.This strategy enables you to leverage thebest of our feature-rich conventionalcontact center and PBX solutions whileadding the advantages of IP.

For example, our Succession* 1000—which provides call processing func-tions—delivers more than 400 world-class telephony features. Furthermore,the Nortel Networks Symposium* CallCenter Server delivers agent featurefunctionality unmatched in the industry,including such capabilities as Agent andSupervisor Management, InCalls key,Breaktime, Alternate Call Answer, AgentPersonal Directory Number, Not Ready,Make Busy, Activity Codes, DisplayWaiting Calls, Supervisor Key,Emergency Key, Return to Queue onNo Answer, and Automatic Answer.

IP CONTACT CENTER MYTH #6"Opening the data network to customercontact will jeopardize security."Today’s connected enterprise faces asecurity paradox. The very openness andubiquity that make the IP networks andthe Internet such powerful businesstools also make them a liability. TheInternet protocol was designed to share,not to protect. The ports and portalsthat welcome remote sites, mobile users,customers, and business partners intothe trusted internal network also poten-tially welcome hackers and others who would misappropriate networkresources for personal gain.

The good news is that comprehensivesecurity capabilities are available to protect all aspects of enterprise, even as it opens up the internal network toexternal customer contact traffic.

Protecting confidential data in transit—Virtual private networks andvirtual local area networks protect datathrough encryption, tunneling, segmen-tation, dynamic routing, and more.

Perimeter defense—ICSA-certifiedstateful firewalls protect a network or its nodes against unauthorized users.

High availability and redundancy—Load-balancing, hardware/softwareredundancy, and failover mechanismsprovide premium uptime and recovery time.

Authentication and intrusion detec-tion—Integration with third-party systems provides verification of usersand acceptable utilization.

Audit trails—Detailed records of alluser and administrator activity and system events can identify anddeflect potential security issues.

Performance enhancers—Accelerationand load-balancing schemes enable acti-vation of a full complement of securitymeasures without performance penalty—especially critical for voice applications.

With new security technologies, enter-prises can confidently and confidentiallyuse managed IP networks and theInternet to carry traffic that originateson unknown, external devices.

IP CONTACT CENTER MYTH #7"Standards flux will cause inter-operability issues."Two signaling standards are prevalentfor VoIP communication betweenclients and gateways: H.323 and SIP(Session Initiation Protocol). Originallydeveloped for IP videoconferencing andlater adapted for VoIP, H.323 can besomewhat more complex to implement.Its complexity is exacerbated by the factthat it is loosely defined enough to giverise to vendor-specific interpretations.

SIP emerged out of a desire to create aless complex standard that would pro-vide call control for multi-party sessions,IP phone calls, or multimedia distribu-tion over the Internet.

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Both protocols support most functionsneeded by end users. Both have theirmerits. While SIP is less complex andprobably more scalable, H.323 offerssuperior QoS through support for dif-ferentiated services, policy management,interoperability, and redundancy.

Does this duplicity of standards createconflict or opportunity for enterprises?According to Forrester, most vendors aremoving to support both standards andwill likely continue to support bothuntil one clearly prevails or the twomerge. Meanwhile, enterprises have theoption to choose the approach that bestsuits their requirements. Those seekingmaximum availability and interoperabil-ity are likely to prefer H.323. If ease ofdeveloping Internet-based applications isa key consideration, SIP would be thepreferred choice.

A similar scenario emerged with gatewaycontrol protocols, notably betweenIPDC (IP Device Control) and SGCP(Simple Gateway Control Protocol).With the advent of the MGCP (MediaGateway Control Protocol) from theInternet Engineering Task Force (IETF),the industry reached a consensus.

The MGCP standard addresses controlof media gateways, which interfacebetween circuit-switched and packet-switched networks. MGCP enables acaller with a PSTN phone number to locate the destination device andestablish a VoIP session.

The ITU and IETF united to combineelements of the IETF MGCP standardand ITU H.323 standard. The resultingstandard is known as Megaco (MediaGateway Control) within the IETF, andH.248 within the ITU. Because thisstandard supports multimedia confer-encing—a growing expectation for con-tact centers—major vendors will tend to support it.

In short, while standards have until nowbeen an obstacle to widespread adoptionof IP contact centers, industry organiza-tions and vendors are constantly work-ing together to improve interoperability—and seem to have arrived at a generalconsensus on future directions for VoIP standards.

What are the components of an IP contact center?Functionally, an IP contact centershould provide equivalent capabilities to a conventional contact center—yeton an IP-enabled or all-IP architecturerather than the conventional, circuit-switched telephony network.

Key components of an IP contact center include:

• Clients are the access devices used byagents, supervisors, and administra-tors. Clients may be IP phones suchas the Nortel Networks i2004 set, IP-enabled digital phones, wireless IPphones, or “soft phones,” which areordinary PCs equipped with VoIPsoftware and a headset to performtelephone set functions. Managementclients enable supervisors and man-agers to access all contact center man-agement tools and reports from astandard Web browser.

• Media gateways are where trafficjumps onto or off the IP networkfrom the circuit-switched network.Media gateways, such as the NortelNetworks Succession Media Gateway,provide flexible network access (forexample, via traditional PBXs, thepublic switched telephone network,the public wireless network, andbeyond).

• Routers shuttle the traffic throughthe IP network, such as to applicationservers and remote agents.

• Application servers provide featuresand services, such as call center func-tions, unified messaging, conferenc-ing, SIP-enabled collaborative appli-cations, or interactive voice response.The Nortel Networks SymposiumCall Center Server is an example ofan IP application server.

• Call control servers—also calledcommunications servers, call manage-ment servers, or gatekeepers—dictatehow it all takes place. The NortelNetworks Succession 1000 andSuccession 2000 are examples of IP call control servers.

• An optional Web center portalroutes, tracks, and reports on elec-tronic inquiries from the enterprise'sWeb site, enhancing customer inter-actions with Web capabilities.

These components and functions aredistributed across a telephony- or business-grade IP network that deliversrequired levels of reliability, voice quality,and congestion management. Extendedreach and mobility can be provided overwireless LANs and public networks andthe Internet.

The client—agent, supervisor,

and administrator access devicesFor contact center agents, the VoIPclient could be a wired VoIP telephone,a digital phone with an IP interfaceadded to it, or a laptop or PC runningsome form of “soft” client. Purpose-builtVoIP clients are generally the most reli-able, while PC-based clients are moreflexible. The choice of client solutionswill continue to grow, influenced byend-user needs and preferences.

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For contact center managers and super-visors, browser-based clients provideaccess to contact center managementsystems and tools over the Web, makingit easy to manage contact center applica-tions and agents from almost anywhere.Since the client application is housed ona centralized server, this solution ismuch easier to deploy and manage thanstandard desktop clients, which requiresoftware installation on every supervi-sor’s PC. The ability to process upgradesand configure agent skillsets from onelocation can save considerable time andexpense for administrators and installers.

Media gateways to

the legacy worldMedia gateways come in two forms:line-side and trunk-side gateways, whichtranslate between VoIP packet data andanalog or digital T1 voice trunks, andanalog and digital telephone set inter-faces, respectively. More generally, amedia gateway provides the media mapping and/or transcoding functionsbetween the IP network and circuit-based networks. This includes compres-sion, silence suppression, and echo can-cellation mechanisms as necessary.

Media gateways also have to handleH.323 or SIP on the VoIP side andwhatever signaling is required on theline or trunk side. In addition, mediagateways reserve and release resources,and track the state of calls, all under thecontrol of the communications server.They also provide maintenance functionssuch as loopbacks and continuity tests.

Application servers for IP

contact center servicesApplication servers support a range ofcontact center services and applications,including CTI, unified messaging, conferencing, and collaborative multi-media services.

The Nortel Networks Symposium CallCenter Server offers powerful call centerfunctions, including skill-based routing,comprehensive management and report-ing tools, and real-time displays forsupervisors and managers. Based on aclient server architecture and industry-standard platform, this application server enables real-time data and hostdata exchange, advanced call handling,and optional integration with multime-dia transaction handling and Web-enabled functionality.

The Symposium Call Center Server supports 2,000 active agents and 3,000agent profiles, all on a single server. For contact centers in small to mid-sized enterprises where simplicity ofmanagement is a fundamental need,Symposium Express Call Center can be used to support up to 150 agents.

Computer-telephony integration forcontact centers is provided by NortelNetworks Meridian* Link Services,TAPI server, and Symposium Agentproducts. A range of voice processingand self-service capabilities can beoffered through Nortel NetworksMeridian Mail, MPS 100, MPS 500,MPS 1000, Periphonics* VPS/is, andSymposium Express Call Center voiceservices card.

Call control servers—the arbiters and

traffic cops of an IP contact centerCall control servers provide the controlrequired to allow multi-channel services—voice calls and data—to be estab-lished across the network.

Communication servers coordinateaddress translation (between telephonyand IP address spaces), and handle callsignal processing, call setup and relatedmanagement, resource management,and admission control in an IP net-work environment.

For example, the communication servermay make a permissioning decision toallow a particular call to proceed basedupon available bandwidth.

Communication servers can keep trackof the state of active calls and generaterequired logs; state tracking is requiredfor all calls involving thin clients, H.323clients, and for some SIP clients.

Communication servers provide thenecessary application-programminginterfaces to integrate application serversinto the VoIP environment. Finally, theycan be replicated for high availability andnetworked for scalability.

The ability to process upgrades and configureagent skillsets from one location can save considerable time and expense for administratorsand installers.

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The Nortel Networkscommunication server,Succession 1000, extendsthe market-leading

Meridian 1* business feature and service set to up to

1,000 IP terminals and four SuccessionMedia Gateways in a single, compact,rack-mounted system. Full-featurednetworking between call control server systems enables support forlarge contact centers.

How is an IP contact centerimplemented?An IP contact center can be developedby IP-enabling a conventional contactcenter to supplement its capabilities, orbuilt from scratch as a pure-IP contactcenter. The underlying network infra-structure in a contact center can now bebuilt on a choice of IP or circuit-switchedtechnology, or a hybrid of both.

IP-enabled contact centers—

the evolutionary approachAn IP-enabled contact center adds IPfunctionality to enterprise telephonynetworks and contact centers, therebyleveraging current investments whileproviding the cost savings and businessbenefits of IP. Enterprises can obtainsome of the benefits of IP without over-hauling their existing infrastructure.

In this architecture, Internet telephonygateways can be added to the existingtelephony switch, enabling it to supportVoIP services. Incoming calls connect tothe telephony switch. The Internet tele-phony gateway translates the call fromTDM (time division multiplexing) to IP.

In some cases, the system can monitorvoice quality to detect any degradationand, if necessary, to dynamically switchto a circuit-switched connection.

This architecture extends the value ofexisting contact center and voice equip-ment, while setting the stage for fullvoice-data convergence in the future.The IP-enabled contact center cangracefully evolve to an all-IP contactcenter by replacing the PBX or otherenterprise phone switch with an IP communication server.

By updating your current communica-tions investment with an IP-enabledsolution, your company should be ableto preserve the viability of its existingPBX system, and deliver innovative features that are only supported byVoice over IP (VoIP).

Internet telephony gateway line andtrunk cards can be added easily to aNortel Networks Meridian 1 PBX system,to enable it to support IP services. IPContact Center software applications andhardware accessories—such as the i2004Internet Telephone, the i2050 SoftwarePhone, and remote office interfaces—extend contact center capabilities toagent stations and among branch officesin this hybrid environment.

Pure-IP contact centers—

the revolutionary approachA pure-IP contact center doesn’t use circuit-switched technology at all. Callsthat originate in the traditional telephonyworld (the public switched telephonenetwork, or PSTN) are converted to IP by a media gateway such as theSuccession Media Gateway. All commu-nication between contact center compo-nents—such as routing among agentsand retrieval of customer database records—takes place over IP connections.

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This approach can offer all the benefitsof IP described earlier, such as lowercapital expenditures and operatingexpenses from network convergence,elimination of toll charges for geograph-ically distributed “virtual” call centers,seamless convergence of voice and datacontact channels, and unified reportingof multi-channel contact center activity.

Deployment choiceNortel Networks supports both IP con-tact center strategies—IP-enabled andpure-IP—with solutions that:

• Enable existing customers to IP-enable their existing Meridian-basedcontact centers, using SymposiumCall Center Server or SymposiumExpress Call Center.

• Create full-IP contact center capa-bility for new contact centers, usingeither the Succession 1000 orSuccession 2000 with SymposiumCall Center Server.

• Enable a smooth migration from IP-enabled to all-IP infrastructures.Symposium Call Center Server operates in both environments.Enterprises can migrate to an IP callcontrol system while retaining theirinstalled, proven contact center applications with familiar displaysand interfaces.

• Support open standards and inter-faces in both environments, integrat-ing with peripheral contact centerapplications on both infrastructures,as well as third-party applications.

Given a choice of compatible deploy-ment options, enterprises can use theirdata network for contact center telephonywhen and where it makes sense. Forinstance, they could use existing circuit-switched systems for local capa-bilities, and add Internet Telephony

Gateway trunk-side interfaces to theirPBX system to allow the use of IP widearea network (WAN) routes for voicebetween contact centers. This strategyextends the value of legacy equipmentwhile reducing toll charges among networked call centers.

Nortel Networks and IPcontact centersIn 30 years, Nortel Networks has estab-lished more than 35,000 customer con-tact centers in more than 100 countries,supporting more than three and a halfmillion agent positions. We’re also aglobal leader in creating mission-criticalIP networks that offer the performancespecifications required by voice service,along with 99.999 percent availability.This unique combination of businessand technological expertise producedour present portfolio of contact centersolutions.

At the core of our IP contact centersolution is the Nortel NetworksSymposium Call Center Server formedium to large enterprises andSymposium Express Call Center forsmall to mid-sized enterprises. Thisaward-winning technology offers advantages to hybrid and pure-IP contact centers:

• Powerful, skill-based routing ofincoming calls to the agent best suited to fulfill the customer’s needs

• Seamless networking among multiple call centers

• Adaptable call handling, with a rich,flexible scripting language that allowsbusiness to customize call routingdecisions and treatment based ontheir business processes

• Graphical, real-time displays of performance statistics to help managers increase responsiveness to changing conditions

• Complete call tracking and reportingto support business decisions, with 70 standard reports available on the Symposium Call Center Server,and the ability to customize histor-ical reports

• Industry-standard, client-server archi-tecture to enable real-time data, hostdata exchange, and other advancedcall handling

• Seamless integration with Web, multimedia, and CTI applications

• Web-based management and clientadministration and configuration

• Automatic monitoring of latency andpacket loss on the IP portion of thenetwork, with fallback to circuit-switched connections as necessary to maintain QoS

• Automatic detection of remote siteconnectivity and QoS, with automatictransitioning to circuit-switchedlinks, to create survivable services,transparent to users

Acknowledging that the existing infra-structure and business case will be different for every enterprise, NortelNetworks offers both an evolutionary,hybrid approach, and a revolutionary,all-IP approach.

Existing Nortel Networks Meridian 1customers can selectively add trunk- and line-side IP connectivity to thesesystems by simply adding gateway cardsto their PBX systems and/or NortelNetworks Remote Office products tobranch- and home-office locations. TheSymposium Call Center Server applica-tion manages both circuit- and packet-based calls, enabling enterprises to continue to use their existing voice anddata networks while evolving to VoIP.

Nortel Networks is an industry leader and innovator focused on transforming how the world communicates and exchanges information. The company is supplying its service provider and enterprise customers with communications technology and infrastructure to enable value-added IP data, voice and multimedia services spanning Wireless Networks, Wireline Networks, EnterpriseNetworks, and Optical Networks. As a global company, Nortel Networks does business in more than150 countries. More information about Nortel Networks can be found on the Web at:

www.nortelnetworks.comFor more information, contact your Nortel Networks representative, or call 1-800-4 NORTEL or

1-800-466-7835 from anywhere in North America.

*Nortel Networks, the Nortel Networks logo, the globemark design, Meridian, Meridian 1, Succession, and Symposium are trademarks of Nortel Networks. All other trademarks are the property of their owners

Copyright © 2003 Nortel Networks. All rights reserved. Information in this document is subject to change without notice. Nortel Networks assumes no responsibility for any errors that may appear in this document.

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Customers wishing to fully embraceVoIP in their contact center right awaycan deploy either a Succession 1000 orSuccession 2000 to provide call control,in place of a conventional PBX.

With either the revolutionary IP-enabledor evolutionary pure-IP approach, theNortel Networks solution providesinvestment protection, deployment sim-plicity, feature richness of our world-class Meridian-based systems—alongwith all the cost-saving, performance,and productivity advantages of IP.

Are you ready to engage your customers?

For more information about NortelNetworks IP contact center solutions, visit our Web site at http://www.nortelnetworks.com/solutions/ipccs/index.html.

References

1. Forrester Research, “Call CenterAgents @Home?,” B. Chatham,November 2001

2. Frost and Sullivan, “IP ContactCenter Market,” K. Howell, April 2002

3. InfoTech, “IP Telephony: CustomerExperiences,” June 2001

4. Federal CommunicationsCommission, “FederalCommunications CommissionReleases Report on the Availability of High-Speed and AdvancedTelecommunications Capability,”February 2002