Boy, all this talk about P2P VoIP, Skype, Google Talk, Vonage, etc., you'd think VoIP were only a consumer play. Well, here's some big news about a VoIP solution for the enterprise, specifically the lucrative call center market from two big boys - namely Siemens and Genesys. The goal of this partnership is to create a complete IP contact center solution.
It's always nice to see a traditional PBX player support the SIP standard, but I'm still not over the old proprietary days ("Over Macho Grande? No, I'll never get over Macho Grande!) that deservedly gave PBX manufacturers a bad name.
Siemens Communications, Inc., and Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc., an Alcatel Company (NYSE:ALA, Paris: CGEP.PA), today announced a new integration of technologies - using open next-generation session initiation protocol (SIP) standards - to bring a single, centralized platform of rich contact center and communication solutions to large enterprises. The integration includes the SIP-based Siemens HiPath 8000 Real-Time IP System and the SIP-based Genesys 7 portfolio of contact center management applications.
"The joint solution consolidates contact center applications on a SIP infrastructure and can help deliver key customer benefits such as centralized management operations and reduced total cost of ownership," said Nicolas De Kouchkovsky, senior vice president of marketing and business development for Genesys. "This combination of SIP-based solutions means that all the resources of an enterprise, regardless of location, can be enabled with applications that produce high-quality contact center service and customer care."
Siemens and Genesys will team to show the power of the combined SIP solutions - for both convergence of network communications and contact center management - at the Fall 2005 VON conference and exhibition, September 19-20. This new approach is designed to enable enterprises using the HiPath 8000 and Genesys 7 platforms to build on existing communication infrastructure investments. The combined solution is also designed to allow the migration to SIP one business unit at a time, with continued interoperability with legacy systems to extend the reach of next-generation SIP solutions throughout an enterprise's IP network infrastructure.
The two companies are building on a longstanding partnership to integrate technologies to create a complete IP contact center solution based around the HiPath 8000 voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) solution, one of the industry's first unified communication softswitches to be built from the ground-up with native SIP architecture. The HiPath 8000 communications system is also designed to provide carrier-grade reliability and with scalability to support the data, telephony and multimedia needs of as many as 100,000 users.
"Our collaborative offering demonstrates the power of SIP and open standards," said Mark Straton, senior vice president of marketing for Siemens Communications, Inc. "Genesys and Siemens each developed product offerings separately, but we integrated the two offerings using SIP. The combined solution is expected to result in a cost-effective, multimedia contact center solution that can scale to support thousands of users and can run on many telephony networks."
Building upon a 10-year reseller relationship, Siemens and Genesys recently completed interoperability testing for the combined solution at the Siemens Labs in San Jose, Calif. Genesys is now completing certification tests prior to making the combined solution market available for proof-of-concept projects today and for production environments in early 2006. Once available, Siemens will also offer a complete set of managed services to support the Siemens and Genesys solutions.
