When I wrote the research report Computer Telephony Integration: Integrating Enterprise Communications for CTR back in 1999, I proposed a universal telephony architecture. The idea was relatively simple. PABXs would standardise the backplane circuit card interface and encourage peripheral manufacturers to release adaptations of their products complying with this interface specification enabling them to be installed within the PABX’s chassis.
In the years that followed, no one appears to have taken this up, not helped by CTR not effectively marketing the report and then going bankrupt. When PABXs and interfacing was discussed in the IT media, they were alleged by their detractors to be “proprietary”. This is nonsense. The operating system within an Avaya or Alcatel PABX is proprietary but so is Microsoft Windows used by PC-based telephone systems. Where proprietary vs standard matters in IT is where one component must interface with another. What operating system is used within a PABX is irrelevant. What is relevant and is proprietary to each PABX is its backplane. This is not, itself, the issue – proprietary interface specifications can be licensed – but if any PABX manufacturer is willing to license its backplane specifications, they’ve been keeping quiet about it.
Assuming they were able to licence the backplane, manufacturers of peripherals with an inherent hardware component – voice mail systems, IVRs and audio call recording systems are the most obvious examples – would be able to offer their products as cards able to be installed within a PABX chassis connected directly to its backplane. Instead of an E1 or SIP trunk card in the PABX connecting to an IVR, complete with its own E1 or SIP card, chassis and power supply, all taking up space in the comms rack, the IVR would be just a card taking up just the one card slot in the PABX. This would cost a lot less and the IVR would be powered from the PABX’s battery backed up power supply.
At a glance, this might appear to be just what PC-based telephone systems from companies as Aspect, Interactive Intelligence, Shoretel and Swyx offer. They do offer such integral modules, but as with the all-in-one stereo system, the specific modules of such systems are that system’s specific set and do not necessarily match the best on the market. By offering the ability to select components as needed and install them within the one chassis, this approach would have offered the best of both worlds and could appropriately have been called the universal telephony architecture.
The universal telephony architecture would have changed the industry. Even if just one manufacturer had adopted it, the others would have had to follow suit quick smart and that vendor would have had a big head start. But no one did.
In 2010, the question is, is it too late?
While PABXs remain significant products, their manufacturers are now more focussed on developing their LAN-based telephone system products. Being inherently composed of distributed components, there isn’t much of a chassis into which compatible components can be inserted and such systems are not typically powered from batteries with several hours capacity. More significantly, do such systems enable interoperability so that one could deploy eMedia CT CTI software from Upstream Works, Softdial Plugin dialling software from Sytel, eGain Live collaboration software from eGain, Livecare MailCentre email software from Icona and a Marathon Evolution audio call recording system from ASC Telecom on a Fluency LAN-based telephone system from Braxtel if that was the organisation’s choice without the comms room looking like a hi fi shop?
Somehow, I doubt it.
