A Soft Sell For Internet Telephony Switches
November 13, 1998
Inter@ctive Week via: PakNetX Corp., which is selling what it calls the industry's first software- only Internet telephony switch, is hoping to push its product out by hitching its wagon to a very big star: Microsoft Corp.
PakNetX, which joined the Microsoft Certified Solutions Provider (MCSP) alliance (www.microsoft.com/mcsp) late last month, will offero other Microsoft partners discounts on its PNX automatic call distributor (ACD) software telephone switch and its ACD application. There are about 18,000 channel organizations in the MCSP program, including application developers, consultants, service providers, systems integrators and training organizations.
The PNX ACD software, which debuted earlier this year, runs on Windows NT servers and handles Internet Protocol (IP) telephony calls. PakNetX (www.paknetx.com) says its product can help call centers better integrate IP telephony calls with Web-enabled customer service applications.
"Our software is ideal for Internet and IP telephony, Internet multimedia call centers and e-commerce environments and applications," says Chris Botting, vice president of marketing at PakNetX.
PakNetX's ACD software lines up and delivers incoming calls to the next available agent, who then can provide the customer with file transfer, text chat, video, Web browser sharing and data collaboration services using H.323/T.120-compliant tools.
Most telephone private branch exchanges now are equipped with ACD features, but those features typically are geared toward conventional circuit-switched telephony rather than Internet telephony, and they provide voice features only. The PNX ACD can handle audio, video and data calls with regular call-control capabilities, such as hold, transfer and conferencing.
Callers can contact customer service agents by clicking on a special button on a company's Web site; they also can contact an agent via a Net phone or a conventional phone connected to an Internet telephony gateway.
For calls that come in from the public switched telephone network (PSTN), the PakNetX ACD can be deployed along with an Internet telephony gateway to the public phone network to bridge a caller to the ACD. But the PakNetX product can't deliver the same features to circuit-switched calls as it can to calls that come in via an IP connection. "Every time you have to talk to the PSTN, you're still limited to 64-Kbps [kilobit- per-second] channels," Botting says.
Botting expects the features for IP telephony systems to be richer than those now available for public network use. "You're going to be able to send stereo- quality audio and data conferencing over the same system," Botting adds.
In addition to its Microsoft alliance, PakNetX is looking to build a partnership with a computer-telephony integration vendor to gain greater distribution for its ACD, according to Botting.
Investors in PakNetX include Intel Corp. (www.intel.com) and Natural MicroSystems (www.nmss.com).
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