3Com Corporation and Aspect Communications today announced an agreement to engage in joint development and sales and marketing to deliver the highly scalable, feature-rich Internet protocol (IP)-based telephony solutions for enterprise and contact centre communications worldwide.
The joint solution combines IP-private branch exchange (PBX) with contact centre functionality such as advanced call routing, multi-channel support and centralised workflow development.
The solution allows enterprises to take advantage of IP to simplify and reduce costs related to such challenges as engaging knowledge workers and remote staff more closely in a wide range of customer, vendor and partner interactions. It opens up new possibilities for businesses by allowing them to execute their visions of newer, more satisfying and more efficient ways of communicating.
"This alliance is another signal that there is a sea change under way in the industry because these types of solutions open up new possibilities for businesses, new ways of thinking about their workforce, their customer, partner and vendor interactions and ultimately their business," said Art Schoeller, senior analyst, The Yankee Group. "Technology is something that is used to realise a business vision and for companies that are thinking of their strategy, communications and customer interactions in competitive, creative new ways, IP combined with all of the reliability and functionality of contact centre solutions offers some unique benefits."
"Leveraging both companies` respective strengths and rich customer bases, the 3Com-Aspect alliance enables businesses to deploy both world-class IP telephony and industry-leading enterprise contact centre solutions," said Dave Hattey, 3Com vice-president and general manager, enterprise voice solutions.
"Enterprises today are under enormous pressure to increase productivity, flexibility and global reach. One of the most cost-effective ways to do this is through our standards-based voice over Internet protocol solution integrated with Aspect`s enterprise-class solutions."
The 3Com-Aspect solution combines the 3Com Networked Telephony Solution --including the VCXT V7000T, an award-winning carrier class IP-platform and NBX 100 Communications System, the first commercially available IP PBX product -- with Aspect`s Uniphi solution suite. The Aspect Uniphi architecture and suite of products unify contact centre applications that were standalone, single solutions into a more beneficial, complete solution. With a single interface to build, manage and deploy contact centre applications, companies can quickly respond to changing business demands. By bringing together mission-critical contact centre applications on a unified platform, any business can finally get an enterprise-wide view of their operations through Aspect`s centralised reporting infrastructure.
"Our Uniphi architecture enabled solutions allow our customers to leverage their existing investments in IP-PBXs to deploy mission-critical contact centre capabilities across their enterprise," said Charlie Rabie, Aspect vice-president of IP call centre technology. "3Com is our first partner in this area - their technology combined with their vision in this area makes them an excellent choice for Aspect. Partnering with 3Com to deliver contact centre systems designed to meet enterprise requirements offers businesses a wide range of practical, innovative communication solutions that reduce the total cost of ownership."
Benefits of the 3Com - Aspect solution include:
Low cost of ownership and clear migration plan: The 3Com-Aspect solution supports a variety of investment and deployment strategies, including traditional PBX preservation or replacement, and use of standard computing platforms.
Open standards and architecture: The 3Com-Aspect solution, based on a session initiation protocol (SIP), significantly reduces the cost of owning a reliable, customisable next generation communications platform that enables employees to work more freely and productively.
Scalable and reliable: 3Com has carried more than 20 billions of minutes voice traffic for leading telecommunications service providers with 99.999% availability. Aspect brings its acclaimed call routing, customer self-service, workforce management and analytics software, based on more than 17 years of experience and more than 8 000 implementations worldwide.
Feature-rich capabilities: Include Aspect`s leading contact centre functionality such as advanced call routing, multichannel support and centralised workflow development applications. It also provides Aspect`s Uniphi system to administer, route, and report on business communications whether they take place within the enterprise or between the enterprise and its customers. The joint solution takes full advantage of a converged network to provide complete enterprise voice, e-mail, Web and contact centre communications.
Product availability
3Com and Aspect intend to deploy their joint solution by the end of the first quarter in 2004.
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3Com is a tier-one provider of innovative, practical and high-value voice and data networking products and solutions for enterprises of all sizes and public sector organisations. For further information, please visit www.3com.com, or the press site www.3com.com/pressbox.
Aspect Communications
Aspect Communications Corporation is the leading provider of business communications solutions that help companies improve customer satisfaction, reduce operating costs, gather market intelligence and increase revenue. Aspect is a trusted mission-critical partner with over two-thirds of the Fortune 50, daily managing more than 3 million customer sales and service professionals worldwide. Aspect is the only company that provides the mission-critical software platform, development environment and applications that seamlessly integrate voice-over-IP, traditional telephony, e-mail, voicemail, Web, fax and wireless business communications, while guaranteeing investment protection in a company`s front-office, back-office, Internet and telephony infrastructures.
Aspect`s leadership in business communications solutions is based on more than 17 years of experience and over 8 000 implementations deployed worldwide. The company is headquartered in San Jose, California, with offices around the world and an extensive global network of systems integrators, independent software vendors and distribution partners. For more information, visit Aspect`s Web site at http://www.aspect.com.
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