Contact centers looking for a comprehensive hosted voice, email and chat solution will be happy to learn that Telesphere, a Cloud Communication Service provider today announced a relationship with CosmoCom. CosmoCom is one of the early pioneers of cloud-based contact center solutions and certainly one of the leaders in this space. CosmoCom has won multiple TMC Labs Innovation Awards, including an award way back in 2002.

Telesphere's relationship with CosmoCom provides businesses and contact center operators with a portfolio of hosted contact center applications and advanced tools including:

• Email, VoIP and chat, all of which can be captured and archived for training and follow up.
• Skills-based routing so customers are routed immediately to the correct agent group.
• Cradle-to-grave reporting, enabling businesses and contact centers to track every interaction for every customer.
• An intuitive, graphical call-flow designer, which eliminates the need for special coding skills to create and modify call flows.
• A 100 percent Web-based design, eliminating the need for client software.
• The ability to bolt on third-party reporting tools.
• Support for whisper and DNIS.

CosmoCom will demonstrate the new interaction management suite at Telesphere's ITEXPO booth, No. 837.

"Powered by CosmoCom, Telesphere's new, completely cloud-based contact center solution enables businesses and contact center operators to implement advanced tools quickly and without the need for a six-figure investment in premises-based hardware and software," said Sanjay Srinivasan, Telesphere CTO.

Here is the photo player for ITEXPO - it will be updated throughout the show and so far has photos from part of day one including keynotes, conferences, registration and others spaces.

Here at ITEXPO West 2011 in Austin I am watching a panel discussing the death of the public switched telephone network during a special keynote panel. Items being discussed are who will pay for the upgrades to E911, will the move save power, how do we deal with the fact that existing equipment is breaking down with no available replacement parts and finally, what will come next?

In conjunction with ITEXPO here at the Omni Hotel in Austin Texas, TMC's Juliana Kenny conducts an interview with an Avaya' Chris Lynk to learn about the communications company's web.alive immersive avatar-based conferencing and collaboration platform.

As Rich Tehrani said, "One lucky ITEXPO West 2011 Austin attendee will win this Jeep. You must be present to win on Thursday, Sept 15th at 2:45pm at the Austin Convention Center in Texas." I still remember one ITEXPO where a guy just left the show and his co-workers frantically tried to find him but to no avail. He missed out on a $25,000+ vehicle. You must be here to win. Can you imagine the ribbing this guy got when he found out he basically just gave up a $25,000 prize?

Here's an image Rich snapped of the Jeep prize. I'd snap one myself, but busy interviewing companies in the press room.

At ITEXPO I met with Artisan Infrastructure's CEO Brian Hierholzer to discuss how Artisan offers a compelling cloud-based solution for MSPs and service providers. Brian explained that one problem with existing managed service providers (MSPs) is that they often compete against their service provider customers by building and selling applications. Brian explained that competitors such as Amazon and Rackspace are now offering their own hosted applications, which undercuts service providers trying to offer hosted applications such as BDR (backup & disaster recovery), email, and hosted phone services leveraging VoIP.

Artisan on the other hand is a 100% pure play wholesale infrastructure services provider. They don't do any business direct to end users so they don't compete against service providers that use their service to build applications.

As you can see, the exhibit hall for ITEXPO is coming together in the Austin Convention Center. Here is a shot of the registration counters being constructed and the hanging of an aisle sign for the collocated MSPWorld.

Here is a good overview of this week's ITEXPO and collocated events. Feel free to bookmark this link, print it or whatever works best for you.

Attend tomorrow's Asterisk 1-2-3 Seminar then head over to Avaya's ever popular Technology on Tap event.

On Tuesday ITEXPO kicks into full swing with collocated conferences, multiple workshops, numerous keynote presentations, and a networking cocktail reception to officially open the exhibit hall.

I am here with my team in the Austin Convention Center determining the layout of the largest ITEXPO in this show's history. Check out the size of this exhibit hall. This is the 24th event and we are looking forward to an awesome week of networking, education, buying/selling and even some fun.

In order to get the communications and technology community ready for one of the largest business technology shows in the world, we strive to interview as many of the participants at ITEXPO and collocated events before the event. What you see below is 59 of the latest interviews from the show - and more importantly a window into the event itself.

We asked participants questions about the cloud, social networking, mobility and the future of tech. Many of them had thought-provoking comments which are something worth chewing on this weekend. The interviews are below:

NAME COMPANY Jason Tapolci VoIP Innovations Mike Coffee Commetrex Mike Ross 4PSA Jon Arnold J Arnold and Associates Greg Brashier Virtual PBX Carl  KS  Teo Ecocarrier Inc. Doug Mohney HD Voice News Alex Ferdman Telinta Denis Gatens OneAccess Networks Chris Perret Nukona Garrett Smith VoIP Supply Tim Whittington Aastra Justin O'Brien CXM Recording and Quality Monitoring  Wes Durow Fonality John Frame Sigma Systems Sarah Carter Actiance Inc Dave Rokita Hexagrid Computing Inc Bud Walder Dialogic Robert Messer ABP Mark Ricca IntelliCom Analytics Chad Kissinger OnrampAccess LLC Michael Stoll GSIS Paul Baron SPIRIT Technologies Chris Bucholtz Sugar CRM Austin McChord Datto Steven Johnson Ingate Mark Swanson Telovations Mark Swanson Telovations Jonathan Stark Mobiquity Neal Axelrad Global Convergence Solutions, Inc. Gene Fay Nine Technology Natasha Tamaskar GENBAND Adam Boone Sipera Greg Friesen DragonWave Brough Turner netBlazr Inc. Brian Hierholzer Artisian Infrastructure John Freimuth Internap Steve Ferman eTegrity Systems International Bob Lawson GFI Software USA  Jeff Connally CMIT Solutions Russell Wurth Verecloud Adam Crossno OnAsset Intelligence Inc. Rod Ullens Voxbone Mike Sapien Ovum John Verry Pivot Point Security Russ Green VPIsystems Joe Staples Interactive Intelligence Stephanie Atkinson Compass Intelligence Peter Cruz Sevone Mike Klein Online Tech, Inc.   Mike Miracle Sevone Chris Carabello Metaswitch Gary Oliverio Crandlepoint Steve Harriman ScienceLogic Jeff Dworkin Sangoma George A. Grabowich Broadview Networks

If you have breaking or other news which you believe is worthy, please reach out to Jaime Hernaez (jhernaez@tmcnet.com) right away to set up a time to meet with members of our team in Austin, Texas at ITEXPO this Monday, Sept 12th, 2011.

The night life here in Austin is legendary with the huge emphasis on live bands. I had a chance to check some of the bands and crowds out last night. It reminded me a bit of Greenwich Village in New York actually. These bars will be a great place for networking next week at ITEXPO for sure. It also marks a sharp contrast to the nightlife in Los Angeles where ITEXPO was held last year. This city has a unique vibe which is difficult to describe.