Nortel Networks, Stratus Technologies launch fault-tolerant call centre solution

Nortel Networks and Stratus Technologies have announced global availability of the Nortel Networks Symposium Call Centre Server Release 4.2 on Stratus Technologies` ftServer portfolio. Designed to provide constant uptime and industry-leading features for customer contact centres, this solution can dramatically increase resilient deployment options for enterprise customers. In addition, the combined solution provides flexibility and ease-of-management features that can create operational simplicity, provide investment protection, and drive reduced operating costs.

Stratus ftServer systems provide a fault-tolerant, high-availability platform that is Windows 2000-compatible. The Nortel Networks Symposium Call Centre Server offers a complete multimedia communication solution for dynamic customer contact centres, providing skill-based routing, comprehensive management and reporting, and real-time displays for supervisors. Because it also supports Internet Protocol (IP) traffic, the Call Centre Server is well suited for and widely deployed in converged networks.

"It`s painfully obvious to all - customer, agent, and management alike - when there`s a service interruption in contact centre operations, which is why Symposium Call Centre Server 4.2 is an ideal application for cost-effective, fault-tolerant Windows-based servers," said Carl Boisvert, senior vice-president of Worldwide Sales, Stratus Technologies.

"Enterprise telephony is a strategic market for Stratus Technologies because of the critical nature of this customer-facing application."

"This combined solution increases resiliency options for our enterprise customers and protects their infrastructure investment. Certifying Symposium 4.2 software running on the Stratus ftServer platform gives our customers hardware and operating system reliability designed to ensure uninterrupted availability of their critical business applications," said Shane O`Neill, global product manager, Enterprise Applications, Nortel Networks. "This high-availability platform positions our customers to implement extremely flexible and responsive contact centres solutions."

Contact centre customers are now able to upgrade from earlier versions of Symposium Call Centre Server or Meridian* MAX to take advantage of the new functionality and enhanced resilience provided by Windows 2000-based Symposium Call Centre Server 4.2. Capable of supporting up to 1 500 agents and 35 000 calls per hour, Symposium Call Centre Server 4.2 is a robust contact centre solution with rich scripting, voice/data integration, multimedia blending, advanced skill-based routing, detailed reporting, and IP-ready functionality, among other features. No application changes are necessary to take advantage of the fault-tolerant capabilities and benefits of continuously available Stratus servers.

Nortel Networks Symposium Call Centre Server enables companies to leverage call centre investments by taking advantage of efficiencies created through IP-based networking. Customers can use the Symposium Call Centre Server with an IP enabled Meridian 1* or a Succession* CSE 1000 IP switch to leverage the power and performance of Internet telephony. Regardless of their business environments - single site or geographically dispersed - enterprises can use Internet telephony to simplify management and administration and to extend customer interaction-centre capabilities to agents anywhere, including those in branch offices or working from home. This flexibility results in lower operating costs and increased employee retention, both of which can improve profits. Symposium Call Centre Server supports Meridian 1, DMS* Centrex, or SL-100 environments.

With quality of customer service, agent productivity, and cost control as top priorities for contact centre managers, `dial tone` availability and reliability of this business-critical operation are essential. Stratus ftServer systems provide outstanding levels of uptime and operational simplicity. Stratus ftServer systems also address the primary causes of system downtime and data loss - single points of failure, hardware failover and recovery time, faulty device drivers, human error, component and software revision incompatibilities - to keep contact centre operations online. The inherent reliability of the hardware fault-tolerant design, coupled with unique software-availability features and integrated service technology provides Nortel Networks customers with a cost-effective approach for eliminating system vulnerabilities and ensuring business continuity.