Hardware-Less Contact Center By ZRG: Oneview contact center solution offers new connectivity interfaces

A contact center acts as a bridge that links your callers with your customer service agents (ACD) and with your self-service facility (IVR). To handle the connectivity of telephone call traffic and the agents, the contact centers require connectivity interfaces. Up until recently, the only way to make such connectivity possible was to install specialised hardware based interface cards in the Contact Center Servers.
The Challenges of hardware interfaces
As business needs grew and customer demand for more value and additional services increased, Contact centers identified various hurdles in delivering the required results in a cost-effective way. In today's distributed and heterogeneous data and network environment, the hardware based interface cards for trunk and agent connectivity posed various challenges that restricted the type of flexibility and capability that are needed by today's contact center. Some of these challenges include:
-- Physical cards are prone to failure
The hardware based interface cards with onboard physical electronics and logic chipsets were prone to various types of failures due to heat, power fluctuations, short circuitry, etc, requiring downtime for maintenance and replacements.
Limited Scalability
Only a certain number of interface cards could be installed due to the fewer number of expansion slots, forcing the business to invest in additional cabinets and servers.
Hardwired configuration
Due to the physical cards being involved, the connectivity becomes fixed to specific hardware server, limiting the options for routing of traffic to alternate or backup server
Server choices are limited
The hardware card interface require specific type of expansion slots in the hosting server. The new and more capable interfaces could not be installed in the older type of slots.
This requirement restricts the cost-effective choices that are available in the server market resulting in more expensive and specialized server.
Hardware less technology innovation
ZRG International, working in close collaboration with leading telecom manufacturers has integrated the innovative hardware less technology in its Contact Center solutions. The previously hardware card based contact center connectivity interfaces for trunks and agents are now available in software version with many additional features. The software connectivity interfaces performs complete traffic and media processing on cost-effective general-purpose industry standard servers.
This approach moves away from the hardware based E1 trunk and IP Agent interface cards, providing all the required capabilities in the form of software connectivity interfaces without requiring the use of specialized hardware interface cards or specialized servers. This innovation has taken the capabilities to a much higher level allowing a great deal of abstraction and virtualisation.
ZRG's OneView contact center IVR and Agent applications can take full advantage of the upgraded connectivity interfaces allowing you to have a hardware-less contact center without the worries related to the challenges described above. The transition from hardware based interfaces to software based interfaces is completely transparent from the customer and user's perspective.
The upgraded interface enabled contact center servers receive and send traffic between trunks and agents in standard IP format to and from anywhere on your corporate LAN.
OneView architecture can be deployed on an enterprise level using a distributed placement of resources and points of connectivity. Under this architecture, you can use the gateway layer as well as the PSTN layer for the desired pre-pick up call traffic flow and routing.
The Benefits
-- Cutting-edge software based interface technology provides numerous strategic benefits to the contact center customers such as:
-- Contact center connectivity interface becomes free from the limitations of hardware cards, allowing you to use any type of cost-effective servers
-- Trunk traffic can be controlled and routed at the gateway layer, making it possible to route trunk traffic to other locations dynamically
-- Provides location independence, enabling you to place the servers and agents at a single or separate locations as per your convenience
-- Bypass the limitation of PC expansion slots that are shrinking in number
-- Removes all chances of hardware card failures due to internal or external causes
-- Provides location independence, enabling you to place the servers and agents as per your convenience
-- Switching process becomes very transparent in case of switching from a primary to a back up server or from a primary location to a DR site
-- Capacity expansion process becomes very simple and can be done remotely without the traditional shipping and delivery delays.
-- Enhances the integration of multi-node and multi-site contact centers, making it simpler to create virtual contact centers
The future outlook
This futuristic approach of software based media interfaces has quickly become the global trend in the contact center industry. With this successful and proven software based interface approach, eventually, the hardware based cards will become obsolete and disappear from the landscape. All of the leading customers looking for new centers or expansions are considering the software interface option instead of the traditional card based interfaces for their ACD and IVR.
About ZRG
ZRG International, the leading provider of Contact Center and Customer Relationship Management solutions, excels in providing IP contact center platforms for small, medium and large enterprises with the largest and most complex requirements, consolidating multiple locations, onshore, offshore, and home-shore agents, formal and informal agents, captive and outsourced operations, multiple communication channels, and multiple applications. ZRG customers include market leading brands throughout the region such as Africa, Middle East, Pakistan & Bangladesh. ZRG is the most-selected provider of captive contact center platforms to top-tier telcos, banks and other service oriented organisations in the region. For more information, please visit: www.zrg.com.