We’ve all had experience with some kind of outbound notification system – maybe a machine calling to inform you that your childen’s school has been closed due to a snowstorm, or some IT triggered alert about your website, or a very sincere recorded voice calling you right at dinnertime during election season. Generally, there are two types of outbound notification systems – the commercial ones such as above, or an emergency notification, which includes crisis alerts. The crisis alerts form a part of the Public Safety segment, which I recently wrote a blog about.
Outbound notification relies heavily on Positive Answering Machine Detection (PAMD) and Call Progress Analysis (CPA) to get the point across. If you aren’t going to be talking to a human, then taking positive action via hanging up and moving on, or leaving a voice mail, or sending a text message or sending a fax is important, depending on the specific application. Either way, the ability to deliver the notification, and then get to the next call as fast as possible is key.
The movement to the IP world in the outbound notification arena provides benefits and challenges. On the benefit side, there are more ways to potentially make the notification depending on the application. Integration with email, video, or social media is much easier. On the challenge side, accurate PAMD and CPA is harder with IP systems. And in an IP architecture, integration of gateways to connect to the existing TDM world and the ability to integrate with SBCs for security and border control are also important. But the world is clearly moving to in the direction of IP, since the benefits outweigh the challenges.
If you are a developer of these notification systems, or a user of these notification systems (such as a school), then you need to consider if the underlying technology can handle PAMD and CPA in an IP environment, if it can integrate with video, email and SMS, if it can do transfers properly, and if it can integrate seamlessly with gateways and SBCs. This is a daunting task for the unprepared. Ah yes, this part is a commercial for Dialogic, as surely no one else can do this…but I can do that sometimes in my blog. 
