EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The integration of telephony and the desktop is here. No longer is this convergence the privilege of bleeding-edge and early adopters. Every company can now take advantage of the progression of this technology. The trick is to wade through the propaganda, software specifications and release notes to understand how you can really achieve this integrated state and provide business users with the capabilities that they care about. This paper seeks to shed some light on a few of the industry leading tools used to accomplish Telephony / Desktop Integration. Furthermore, we have chosen to focus on solutions for environments that support Cisco telephony architecture. Hundreds of 3rd party applications have been created for Cisco’s Unified Communications platform. Surprisingly, only a small number of these actually fit the bill for Telephone / Desktop Integration to Cisco’s platform. For this paper, we have selected three industry leading solutions: Cisco’s Unified Personal Communicator (CUPC), Microsoft Office Communicator 2007, and Netelligent’s Interact® 2.1. Unfortunately, one solution does not prove to be the best for every user scenario. As an end-user of IP Telephony, or someone who is evaluating desktop to telephony integration, it is critical to understand what you are looking to accomplish, or what you are looking to enable your users to do. The spectrum of features and requirements is very broad, nonetheless, there are a few leaders in the market that have established credibility with their feature offering combined with a must-have user friendliness factor. DEFINITIONS Presence The ability to detect whether other users are online and whether they are available. Presence services are commonly provided through applicationslike instant messagingclients, although a number of companies are developing products in other areas that leverage presence, such as VoIP. CTI Computer-Telephony-Integration, CTI is an umbrella term that covers all integration between computer and telephony resources. Traditionally, the term “CTI” has been limited to describing the telephony operations at a user’s desktop, specifically screen pops, coordinated voice/data transfer and call control. However, as the CTI industry has matured, so too have user expectations. Today, CTI refers to “all things computer-telephony” including call routing, database lookups, IVR integration, workflow, application integration, and Web/E-mail integration in addition to desktop telephony operations. Business System Integration The process of enabling Business Units and IT to bridge the gaps between people, processes, applications and systems. Integration of datasystems allows information existing on disparate systems to be shared or accessed across functional or system boundaries. PRESENCE IN THE ENTERPRISE Presence is an emerging technology that can provide real benefits in accelerating communication and collaboration between people. A traditional model of presence is seen in today's computer-based instant messaging (IM) applications. If you are online and want a quick back-and-forth communication with a friend or colleague, IM is a fast and easy alternative to e-mail. One valuable aspect of IM is the capability to see whether your friend or colleague is currently logged on to the network. This presence information allows individuals to share information about their status with others on the network. If a colleague is online and active, you can type and send your message. It will pop up on the recipient's screen instantly, and a reply will probably appear on your screen within seconds. If you had used e-mail instead, you would not know whether your recipient was online, or present to read your message, nor should you necessarily expect to see a response to your message any time soon. Cisco’s Unified Personal Communicator Cisco’s Unified Personal Communicator (CUPC), is a client that delivers on it’s integration capabilities with Cisco’s Unified Communication Manager platform. Organizations that require presence on the desktop will need to evaluate this application. With CUPC, presence information is used to determine the ability, willingness, and preferred communications mode of a potential communication partner. Though not quite as scalable as other mainstream IM clients, CUPC highlights include; a Unity voicemail listing feature, built-in softphone, calendar integration and Meetingplace integration. With Cisco Unified Personal Communicator, you can enhance communications beyond the realm of voice calls using video and Web conferencing. CUPC’s strengths lie in its ability to integrate with several Cisco applications and its mix of presence features as discussed below. Cisco Unified Personal Communicator helps you determine if co-workers are available or busy before trying to contact them. This availability information is updated automatically using dynamic information from Cisco’s Unified Presence Server. You can see immediately who is online, offline, available, or busy. Customized information, such as "on vacation" or "in a meeting", can also be shared to let you know why someone is unavailable or busy. CUPC also lets you know which method of contact other users prefer-voice, video, instant messaging, or e-mail. Of course with presence, you will also have the ability to “chat” with another CUPC user inside your organization. Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 With organizations that have the Office Communications Server 2007 licensing, simply adding a component could enable your desktop for voice. Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 like Cisco’s Unified Personal Communicator, streamlines communications by enabling you to connect easily with others in different locations using the communication method that works best. With rich presence awareness, software-powered voice capabilities, enterprise-class Instant Messaging (IM), and multi-party audio and video conferencing, you can connect and collaborate from any location with Internet connectivity. Closely integrated with the Microsoft Office system, Office Communicator 2007 links seamlessly with the applications you use most — including Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint sites, and others. Office Communicator 2007 offers greater granularity for controlling access to your presence information. Now you can assign varying levels of access to your contacts to control who can see your presence information and how much of it they can see. For example, you can assign the team access level to your closest coworkers to allow them to see your mobile phone number and to interrupt you when in Do Not Disturb mode. For other coworkers in your company, you can assign the company access level, so that they can see your work phone number, but not your mobile phone number, and they cannot interrupt you when in Do Not Disturb mode. Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 introduces new presence states that are determined by a user-configurable, idle-time setting that monitors user activity on the computer. If no activity is detected, the presence state transitions from Available, to Inactive to Away. Besides internal IM communications, if your company’s Office Communications Server supports Public Internet Connectivity, you can even add contacts from AOL®, Yahoo!® Messenger, MSN®, and Windows Live™ network of Internet services. Netelligent Interact 2.1 Netelligent’s Interact, part of the Netsoft Suite is a plug-and-play tool that enables an organization to access vital customer information by integrating multiple systems and platforms. Interact brings together the Cisco platform, email systems, business systems and utilizes an organization’s IP network to deliver their application. Within the desktop client’s capabilities are integration methods that allow users multiple ways to reach clients and coworkers. Interact’s searching ability is only restricted by the fields in the application it is searching. Finding a coworker or customer for click-to-dial, click-to-email or click-to-chat (internal or external IM services), is searchable by any field in the application the user has integrated to Interact - MS-Outlook, Lotus, CRM, ERP, etc. Interact does not deliver on a true presence feature set. Its ability lies in searching and contacting external contacts by multiple methods - phone, email, chat, and with multiple choices inside those methods - office, home, & mobile number. Cisco UPC + + + + + Ability to set your contact preference, calendar integration, scalability issues Microsoft OC + + + + Access levels to restrict/gain presence info, new presence states, IM external Netelligent Interact + Multi integrations, Access all contact information, no true presence capability COMPUTER TELEPHONY INTEGRATION With global competition never more intense, the ability to retain customers and attract new business through personalized service has become an essential corporate competency. Companies from large financial services firms to small private banks are recognizing that success depends on meeting the unique needs and expectations of each customer by delivering products and services when, where and how the customer wants them. To that end, customer-service leaders in many industries are leveraging Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) to cultivate customer relationships via CRM/ERP tools. The goal is to capture, evaluate, integrate and utilize information held within these multiple systems, and corporate databases and deliver incoming customer-profile and transaction data to the agent’s or knowledge worker’s desktop. By implementing this model at an enterprise level, companies can provide individualized service to every customer. Cisco’s Unified Personal Communicator Cisco Unified Personal Communicator transparently integrates a wide variety of communications applications and services, connecting you to a rich set of unified communication tools. Users can easily search existing directories to locate important contacts and initiate communications. Integrations include your corporate directory (LDAP), MS-Outlook, and Voicemail for a listing of messages which also includes a playback option. Click-to-dial can be handled from the CUPC client using its softphone or via 3rd party call control. Integrated voice and video calling allow colleagues to exchange ideas face to face with a coordinated video display on the PC screen and audio conversation with the built-in soft phone. Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 The Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 client software integrates voice, IM, video, live data communications, and presence awareness with other Microsoft Office applications. Microsoft Office Communicator publishes the user’s presence status, Phone state, Calendar state, and Device state. In addition to publishing presence information, Office Communicator 2007 consumes presence information from Office Communications Server by subscribing to the presence status of other contacts. Office Communicator is the only client that publishes the Calendar state of a user. Netelligent Interact 2.1 Netelligent’s Interact® takes CTI to a level where there truly is out-of-the-box integration in a day. Integrated to a list of many corporate enterprise systems and standard databases, Interact® via their friendly desktop tool, enables users to access corporate databases and customer information in real-time by integrating with multiple systems and platforms. With the flexibility to search across all contacts for click-to-communicate functionality, users have access to reach their customers quickly and by different modes - phone, email, chat. The CTI capabilities also gives users of Interact a quick dial utility which allows for speed dialing numbers in web pages, emails, word documents, etc. CTI also delivers enhanced call history data, so users are not only seeing the number, date, and time stamp of their missed or received calls, but will also see a name associated with the external call. Interact’s ability to have integration at the API level means that users of CRM will benefit from gained efficiencies like auto screen pop, recognized contact data and many other features delivered using CTI. Interact® does have third party call control and with features like; answer, hold, resume, intelligent transfer, rapid divert, and record, delivers a robust set of actions to control a user’s Cisco desk or softphone communication. Cisco UPC + + + Softphone, MS-Calendar Sync, video, Meetingplace integration Microsoft OC + + + Softphone, Calendar Sync, video, multiple MS integrations Netelligent Interact + + + + + Nice call control features, Quick Dial, Best call data & search tool, Record Calls BUSINESS SYSTEM INTEGRATION Business Integration is a matter of survival for many businesses. The increasingly collaborative and global nature of business today has necessitated not only extensive integration within the enterprise, but also real-time connections to suppliers, partners and customers. At the same time, Mergers and Acquisitions have further fuelled this demand to be quick and reliable. The success of mergers has come to depend, to a great extent, on the speed of integrating their respective diverse business systems. Organizations that have implemented an IP strategy now expect to integrate those varied business systems and databases. From IP Phones, to mobile devices, wireless desktop, or remote teleworking, users expect immediate access to their customer data. Cisco’s Unified Personal Communicator Cisco’s Unified Personal Communicator application uniquely integrates your most frequently used communications applications and services. Collaboration is enhanced by sharing documents and communicating with colleagues face-to-face using video and Web conferencing. Users can respond faster to customers with this type of improved internal communications. External integrations include MS-Outlook and Active Directory for contact data. Users can also click-to-dial through CUPC by means of the Outlook Toolbar. Cisco Unified Presence makes available the free and busy information from the Exchange server to CUPC for use when computing the reachability status of a user. Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 The enhanced presence model is integrated into Microsoft Office applications, so that users can not only see each other’s presence status while working in Office applications, but they can also initiate communication such as IM and phone calls from within the Office applications. For example, a user can right-click another user’s presence icon from the To line of Office Outlook or from the Modified By column in a SharePoint Web site and then send an instant message or place a call to that user. Because presence is integrated throughout Office applications, users can initiate communication without leaving the application in which they are currently working. Netelligent Interact 2.1 Interact’s capability to integrate Cisco Unified Communications with desktop applications allows organizations to take full advantage of their CRM applications and UC technologies. Delivering business intelligence to the call center agent, knowledge worker, or general user, Interact provides the user with the information they need in addition to creating seamless customer interactions. Because these applications live on the network, a tool like Interact can now access these disburse databases and give users access to their contact data, CRM, and interactions via this unique client. With Interact on their desktop, users can quickly find and dial contacts, know who is calling them on the second ring, automatically populate CRM/ERP screens, record calls, and even do this within multiple applications. Cisco UPC + Meetingplace integration, share documents Microsoft OC + + Live Meeting integration, Sharepoint integration, MS office toolbar Netelligent Interact + + + + + Multiple CRM/application integrations SUMMARY What we really have here is two distinct paths that these manufacturers have taken, though there is some obvious overlap in their applications. With Cisco and Microsoft, organizations that feel presence and internal communications would be the most beneficial should feel comfortable in deploying this technology and realizing productivity gains. This presence model has been designed to enhance internal communications between colleagues, allowing them to control interruptions and making them more productive. These same users can also make informed decisions about the best way or time to contact others, thus eliminating time wasted with unsuccessful communication attempts. With enhanced communication media like video and web collaboration these integrated applications take presence to the next level and can significantly reduce costs in the enterprise. Companies deploying Interact can also take advantage of some internal communication with Active Directory integration, utilizing its multiple search criteria function, speed dials and enhanced call history. However, the real advantage of interact is connecting with external contacts, utilizing CRM to its full advantage, and accessing data in multiple systems. Interact’s strength to an organization is its one-stop-shop access to all your applications. Using one client to search multiple databases - MS-Outlook, Lotus, SAP, MS-CRM, MS-SQL, Salesforce, Saleslogix, etc., and then having access to all of that client’s information spells productivity. Automatically treating inbound calls and populating CRM applications with customer data enhances callcenter, helpdesk and even sales activity.