Migrating from the legacy TDM telephony world to IP Telephony, a large number of enterprises have completely altered their telecommunication infrastructure. Some enterprises have accomplished this in a single step – an infrastructure revolution, while others have taken this process in a step by step manner. These infrastructure upgrades prompt other changes to occur such as with Value Added Services (VAS), a telephony applications layer which resides above the telecommunication infrastructure.
Value Added Services represents the higher layer of telecommunication services, beyond standard voice calls, which contribute a lot to the enterprise efficiency, reducing Opex and increasing productivity. Enterprises are often ambivalent when trying to select their Value Added Services portfolio, especially in the early stages of implementation or while upgrading from a TDM to VoIP infrastructure, struggling between the need for innovative services and a strict budget limitation.
Some of the elementary Value Added Services for the enterprise are:
- Voicemail – Enables call completion for non-answered calls
- Conferencing – Enables multi-user conference calls
- Auto Attendant – Enables automatic incoming call routing for out of office hours
- Fax – Distribute faxes externally or receive incoming faxes
There are still a number of enterprises which have not yet completed this shift, due to the Value Added Services package implementation time and pricing. Most enterprises would like the upgrade to occur step by step.
AudioCodes has recently introduced a line of services for the Small & Medium sized Enterprise market - the InTouch Enterprise Edition (EE) Platform.
This new offering presents a strong collaboration between two AudioCodes’ Business Lines:
- AudioCodes Enterprise Business Group – Providing enterprise class Media Gateways
- CTI² - AudioCodes Value Added Services Business Line
These services run on AudioCodes’ Mediant™1000 chassis, utilizing its Open Solution Network (OSN) Server combined with the Media Processing Module (MPM).
This platform is a cost-effective suite of Value Added Services, providing a single box of Value Added Services and Gateway solutions for enterprises. The existing Mediant 1000 install base can be easily upgraded to support the InTouch EE line of services.
The InTouch EE line of services is comprised of easy to manage Value Added Services, targeting small and medium sized enterprises. Multi-branched enterprises benefit from this centralized Value Added Services platform. By utilizing the existing VoIP multi-branch network, each remote branch employee can be a user of the system as if they were located in the main office.
The conference bridge is an excellent example demonstrating this benefit. By scheduling a weekly sales team conference call, each one of the sales team from any of the distributed branches can dial in and join the centralized conference bridge without the need to pay for external services– each one of these conference calls are free of charge. This reduces Opex and improves the efficiency of the enterprise.
The InTouch EE contains the following Value Added Services:
- Voice Conference Bridge – 3 types of Conference Bridges. Up to 60 conference ports
- Record Your Call for the Enterprise - Each user can record their incoming or outgoing voice calls
- Record Your Call for Call Centers: Records all call center incoming and outgoing calls
- Fax To Email – Automatic routing of incoming faxes to an email account
- OPENVoicemail – Rich Telephone User Interface voicemail
- VoicemailPLUS – Visual voicemail with personal address book and voice to email notification
- Auto Attendant - Enterprise IVR that enables incoming call navigation
- Web Fax Server (Fax Out) – Enables fax distribution, including broadcasts using web or email interfaces
InTouch EE services are simple Add-Ons to the Mediant 1000 and straightforward services. Each of the above services can be implemented as a single service and can be complementary per the needs of the enterprise where there is no overlap with the IP-PBX offering or the Unified Messaging service.
If required, the enterprise can choose to run more than one service on the same box in a step by step fashion according to its needs.
- Conference followed by Record Your Call
- Fax-To-Email followed by VoicemailPLUS
(Click on image to enlarge).