Zeacom Limited,—which has offices in New Zealand, Australia, the United States, and the U.K—may be the most successful vendor of contact center and unified communications software that you've never heard of.
The company got its start with a call center application built to work on top of NEC's line of IP PBXs. Ten years ago, according the Zeacom vice president Brady Cox, "we realized since we have such deep control over the PBX, we could start to do other things outside of the contact center. So, using the same platform, we developed an operator console, voicemail, and desktop telephony."
Over time, that function set has evolved into Zeacom Communications Center (ZCC), a single complete, integrated system that provides a full range of contact center, voice, messaging, presence, and mobility functionality that works with not only NEC's PBXs, but with those from Cisco and Avaya as well. Although Zeacom has a small number of direct customers, the product line is sold primarily through a combination of OEM agreements and a worldwide reseller network.
Today, Zeacom announced the release of version 5.0 of the ZCC. The new version pushes the envelope in several functionality areas—primarily presence, mobility, and audio conferencing.
Zeacom has used its expertise in computer/telephony integration (CTI) to create a system that automatically tracks certain aspects of availability status, based on keyboard and/or mouse activity.
"If someone in our Melbourne office has walked away from their desk," Cox told VoIPplanet.com, "after two minutes, it will change their presence icon to reflect that. When they come back, it will notify us." That's what Zeacom calls 'rich presence' monitoring.
Another piece of presence functionality unique to Zeacom's ZCC offering is called 'activity presence.' "Our voicemail piece isn't just traditional voicemail," Cox explained. "We allow you to record up to 99 prerecorded greetings that explain you're in a meeting, at lunch, traveling, whatever it may be. Then you simply click a button to forward your phone to one of those greetings.
"When you do that, your presence status changes on our presence buttons around the world to reflect that you're on a plane until 5:00 o'clock, or whatever it is."
The ZCC application offers a spectrum of mobility features, according to Cox.
On one end of the spectrum, "There are some nice, simple features that tie in the desktop phone to your cellular device," he said. "For example, if I have walked away from my desk, that phone will ring for two seconds, then automatically flick off to my cell phone, because it knows I'm not at my desk. Then when I get back to my desk, I can grab it back off my cellphone with one button click."
On the sophisticated end of that spectrum, is a software client for BlackBerries and PDAs that carries on full communication with the corporate network and directories. "It's tied in to the same ZCC server that's plugged in and talking to the PBX," Cox explained. "So I can track the presence status of my management team—wherever they happen to be—and see what they're doing right now."
An adjunct to this is a Web portal where users can access presence status information and corporate directories, IM other staff members, and make phone calls.
New to the ZCC offering is a fully managed 64-port audio conferencing system. The GUI client piece integrates with Outlook, hence with e-mail and calendaring. Users can send out an invitation/appointment with link to the call.
"The beauty of it," Cox said, "is that you can drive who attends from the GUI, and you can control the environment. You can mute everybody, mute individuals, disconnect individuals. You can move individuals into a separate conference room—split one conference into multiple conferences. And you can bring them all back again.
"The ability to schedule a conference in Outlook and e-mail it out means that you can involve third parties into your conference call," Cox concluded.
Toward the end of our briefing with Zeacom, Cox disclosed another unique feature of ZCC version 5.0: "We think we're going to be the first to do 'presence profile reporting,' he said. "We're going report on What percentage of the day did Brady have his phone forwarded to voicemail? What percentage did it say he was at lunch? Etc."
According to Cox, this feature has significance both as a management tool and as a measure of return on investment.
"The whole premise of unified communications is to make yourself more available, easier to talk to, communicate with, more efficient, and more productive," he said. "What we do is save little bits of time very, very frequently. We're saving seconds everywhere we go. This begins to measure that, and talk about availability time spent communicating—make that tangible."
Zeacom targets its product line a small to medium size businesses—5 to 500 contact center agents, 5 to 2,500 enterprise users.
"We've got a very linear pricing model," Cox told VoIPplanet. "We do a per-user license for everything that has a client, then we do site licenses for the back-end stuff. You buy it once and apply it to your whole environment."
www.voipplanet.com
The IT Manager's Guide to Voice over IP
VoIP Planet Newsletter
Search VoIP Planet
internet.com
IT
Developer
Internet News
Small Business
Personal Technology
International
Search internet.com
Advertise
Corporate Info
Newsletters
Tech Jobs
E-mail Offers
Zeacom Launches Communications Center Version 5.0
Generate Revenue Through IT Using Business Service Management
Sponsored by HP
Making sure that your business applications are available to their end users is an important part of running your business smoothly. Business operations have evolved to where IT must now broaden its focus to help the company attract, retain and grow customer relationships and increase customer satisfaction. Business service management (BSM) helps lay the foundation by managing services in dynamic support of business requirements. »
Managing the Modern Network
Sponsored by HP
Networks are more than vehicles to transport e-mail and Web pages. In a global economy where information crosses the globe in an instant, and where Web-based applications power business, it's more important than ever to ensure your network is safe from threats and optimized to deliver the data your business needs. »
Storage Networking 2, Configuration and Planning
Sponsored by HP
In Part 1, we discussed storage area networks (SANs) and fibre channel. In Part 2, delve into best practices and cover the general concepts you must know before configuring SAN-attached storage. The most critical, sometimes tedious, part of setting up a SAN is configuring each individual disk array. This guide examines configurations for SAN-attached servers and disk arrays, and also includes a look at the future of IP storage.
»
Is Your Disaster Recovery Plan Good Enough? Get Disaster Recovery Right
Sponsored by HP
Preparing for a disaster is more often than not part of the storage planning process, and without question it is one of the most difficult task, since it includes local hardware and software, networking equipment, and a test plan to ensure that you can recover from the disaster. Learn how to put your organization on the proper disaster recovery plan, now. »
Related Articles
• Nortel, Microsoft Expand Unified Communications
• Siemens Reinvents IP Communications
March 14, 2008
By Ted Stevenson
Tools:
Add voipplanet.com to your favorites
Add voipplanet.com to your browser search box
IE 7 | 
Firefox 2.0 | Firefox 1.5.x
Five Trends for Application Development & Program Management. Download Complimentary Report Now.
Five Trends for Application Development. Download Your Complimentary Report. Exclusive. Act Now.
HP eBook: Using Business Service Management (BSM) to Manage Your Business Applications
Visit ServerWatch for the latest server news and trends.
Article: Manage Your Windows Infrastructure with Microsoft System Center
Solutions
Whitepapers and eBooks
Microsoft Article: HyperV-The Killer Feature in WinServer ‘08
Avaya Article: How to Feed Data into the Avaya Event Processor
Microsoft Article: Install What You Need with Win Server ‘08
HP eBook: Putting the Green into IT
Whitepaper: HP Integrated Citrix XenServer for HP ProLiant Servers
Intel Go Parallel Portal: Interview with C++ Guru Herb Sutter, Part 1
Intel Go Parallel Portal: Interview with C++ Guru Herb Sutter, Part 2--The Future of Concurrency
Avaya Article: Setting Up a SIP A/S Development Environment
IBM Article: How Cool Is Your Data Center?
Microsoft Article: Managing Virtual Machines with Microsoft System Center
HP eBook: Storage Networking , Part 1
Microsoft Article: Solving Data Center Complexity with Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007
MORE WHITEPAPERS, EBOOKS, AND ARTICLES
Webcasts
Intel Video: Are Multi-core Processors Here to Stay?
On-Demand Webcast: Five Virtualization Trends to Watch
HP Video: Page Cost Calculator
Intel Video: APIs for Parallel Programming
HP Webcast: Storage Is Changing Fast - Be Ready or Be Left Behind
Microsoft Silverlight Video: Creating Fading Controls with Expression Design and Expression Blend 2
MORE WEBCASTS, PODCASTS, AND VIDEOS
Downloads and eKits
Sun Download: Solaris 8 Migration Assistant
Sybase Download: SQL Anywhere Developer Edition
Red Gate Download: SQL Backup Pro and free DBA Best Practices eBook
Red Gate Download: SQL Compare Pro 6
Iron Speed Designer Application Generator
MORE DOWNLOADS, EKITS, AND FREE TRIALS
Tutorials and Demos
How-to-Article: Preparing for Hyper-Threading Technology and Dual Core Technology
eTouch PDF: Conquering the Tyranny of E-Mail and Word Processors
IBM Article: Collaborating in the High-Performance Workplace
HP Demo: StorageWorks EVA4400
Microsoft How-to Article: Get Going with Silverlight and Windows Live
MORE TUTORIALS, DEMOS AND STEP-BY-STEP GUIDES