Perfect Fit
Computer telephony integration in India has a long way to go, but the prospects are fascinating.
Delhi-based telecom startup Dialnet Communications has a licence from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to sell value-added services like voicemail and audiotext. Thanks primarily to two technologies that are revolutionising the way the world communicates - telephones and computers - Dialnet expects to offer over a dozen services more, adding a whole variety of value features to these services. Computer telephony solutions, targetted at the big business and the small office are flooding the market, and there is one available at every price point.
Nobody is looking at the potential of computer telephony integration (CTI) applications in the Indian market as it should be looked at, says Prasun Biswas, general manager, projects.
In simplest terms, computer telephony integration is the technique of co-ordinating the actions of telephone and computer systems.
CTI is a small market today estimates of its size vary from Rs 40 to Rs 75 crore. Most of the computer telephont market is still limited to store and forward voice messaging systems and automatic call distribution through the electronic private automatic exchange boards (EPABX) mostly used in the big hotels, most multinational companies and a few large Indian corporates.
Some CTI applications have found their way into the banking world too. In April this year, Bank of America installed a computer-based tele banking application that makes life easier for its customers and its customer service employees. An account holder can now just dial into the banks automatic customer service centre, key in a personal identity number (PIN) and then navigate through and choose from the range of services available.
Bank of Americas customers can use the telephone to access their personal account information stored in the banks main computer, make transactions, transfer money and so on. A co-ordinated computer-telephony interface can also mean that business customers can use the telephone to automatically receive information about a product through a fax machine.
One key to such services is the integration of the telephone network within the organisation to the business database. Each product has to be customised to the users needs, says P V Ramdas, vice president of the Telecom division at HCL Corp. The database which may reside in a large mainframe or servers. The automatic teller machine (ATM) and other banking applications have to be integrated with the EPABX through which the call comes in, he adds. It is the correct interface between the telephone keys and the servers that opens up the database.
The power driving the Computer telephony industry is telephonic network access to computer information through almost any convenient, easy-to-use, and available terminal device, be it the normal phone, the pager, a personal computer or a personal digital assistant. The new ear of network-based computing also provides an added impetus to the acceptance of the technology.
CTI technology has existed in commercial form since the mid-1980s, but it has been exploited only in a few niche markets particularly in large call centers, where call volumes easily justified the cost of complex custom-built systems. But in the 1990s, several factors have combined to significantly simplify computer-telephone systems and increase the marketplaces interest in computer telephony.
There is also the fact that international standards for interconnecting telephone and computer systems have now been clearly defined. Most notable are the Computer-Supported Telephony Application (CSTA) call modeling and protocol standards. Mass-market application programming interface (API) specifications have been heavily promoted by major market players such as Microsoft and Novell, and are gaining rapid acceptance.
One such standard that is now available is the Signal Computing System Architecture (SCSA). SCSA is a comprehensive reference architecture for building computer telephony systems that incorporate applications and technologies from different vendors, putting an end to system incompatibility issues that used to dog the industry in the initial stages.
SCSA provides a common set of hardware and software specifications that manufacturers can use to build computer telephony systems so that their products will work with other vendors products. SCSA specifications extend from low-level bus and hardware interfaces to high-level applications programming and software interfaces. SCSA was initiated jointly by leading computer and switch manufacturers spearheaded by Dialogic, one of the industrys leading CTI players, and was announced in 1993.
There are several other standards that define how computer-telephony systems interface with the telephone network. Telephony Application Programming Interface (TAPI) is a call control API developed by Microsoft as an interface to the Windows Telephony Services defined under the Windows Open Services Architecture (WOSA).
TAPI is currently used for applications that allow users to control telephone calls from a PC running some version of Windows.
A future release of TAPI will support applications in a client-server environment.
Telephony Services Application Programming Interface (TSAPI) is a call control API developed by AT&T and Novell. It is currently available for networks with Novell NetWare-based servers, but is expected to become available for other platforms in the near future.
TSAPI is generally used as a networking tool for controlling telephone switches (PBXs).
Javatel from Sun Microsystems specifies the standard API for computer telephony applications running under Java.
It provides the definition for a reusable set of telephony call control objects which enable application portability across platforms and implementations.
These standards are pushing up the numbers and types of applications that are available in the market. For companies like Parsec Technologies, the rising number of options is a boon. This Delhi-based CTI applications development firm was established by four IIT Delhi graduates Ashutosh Roy, Prabhat Agarwal, Gunjan Sinha and Rohit Sikka less than a year ago. Parsec has notched up revenues of over Rs 1 crore already and expects to triple it in the next year.
Parsecs main product is an applications development platform, called the MARS server, which service providers like Dialnet can use to rapidly develop and deploy new services. The Mars CTI servers together with Parsecs application development environment called ADEN can be used for implementing customised CTI applications based on the Windows and Windows NT platforms.
MARS is based on the Windows platform. The ubiquity of the Windows operating environment gives it a wider user base. For one, as this industry expands, businesses expect the same open standards and interoperability from their CTI servers as is now available in the client-server networks. Organisations rely on industry standard modules to build and connect their back-office servers at the heart of corporate networks to their front end applications.
The CTI applications market in India is expected to triple in the next five years. And a large chunk of this will comprise of the type of customers that Dialnet is targetting: Small and medium enterprises and individual and home users. These are frequent users who need these capabilities but cannot afford to buy expensive CTI equipment or applications, says Biswas. Dialnet proposes to offer a combination of data, voice and multimedia services over a single switching exchange installed at its premises.
Services like interactive voice response (IVR) and fax on demand will be combined together with audiotex.
The Indian CTI market has been a limited one in the kind of applications that have been available. Most of it so far has been voice-mail related uses. The lack of digital telephone lines was the main limiting factor, says P.V Ramdas. But that scene is changing now.
DoT plans to install nearly 3 million telephone lines in the country in 1997-98. Between 5-7 per cent of these lines will be used for CTI applications market. The EPABX market too is expanding rapidly. Some five per cent of all EPABXs installed today have CTI-based solutions bundled with them. Currently estimated at about 4 lakh lines, the EPABX market is expected to grow by about 30 to 35 per cent over the next few years.
There is a long way to go before CTI takes off in a big way, agrees Bo Gustafsson, regional sales manager for Ericsson Business Networks. Ericssons MD110 EPABX solution is one of the more advanced CTI platforms available in the market today. However, these are expensive solutions and for a price sensitive market like India, not very viable. Of the total market, according to estimates, the MNC products account for between Rs 20 to 30 crores.
However, cheaper locally developed solutions are also becoming available. But first, as Ramdas says, the digital desk has to emerge in organisations. That may mean additional investments of a couple of thousand more for each desk -- and this is something that most Indian organisations are reluctant to do.
Also, most businesses in the country have still to evolve a proper computerised work environment. Take for instance the Indian banks they have huge deposits and large volumes of business. But these banks do not have their back office systems in place still. So installing advanced CTI solutions for them does not really make sense. But if the optimism of the players translates into real sales and installations, here we have another area where computers induce greater productivity.