Oracle s Contact Center Communications Solution Improve Business Agility, Customer Satisfaction and Economics
Oracle s contact center solution is designed to enable the hyperconnected enterprise a new type of organization that uses communications to attain neverbefore-achieved levels of customer engagement, employee productivity, and competitive advantage. Businesses are looking to IP-enable contact centers to increase business agility, improve customer experiences, and contain costs. But implementing an end-to-end IP contact center network extending real-time IP communications sessions across IP network borders, elements and applications introduces a variety of deployment and management challenges. Connectivity, security, and control issues can lead to project delays, budget overruns, and poor service quality. The Oracle Acme Packet IP contact center solution is specifically designed to help enterprises overcome the unique connectivity, security, and control challenges they typically encounter when integrating diverse network elements and applications or extending real-time communications sessions across IP network borders. The solution establishes an extensible and scalable IP communications architecture that simplifies the adoption of new IP-based contact center applications. By embracing Web services application models, the solution enables tight integration between disparate communications systems and applications, regardless of whether these functions are provided through cloud or on-premise models. The solution integrates the contact center into an Oracle Acme Packet Hyper-connected Enterprise Network an infrastructure that enables a new era of rich employee collaboration and fast, efficient customer service. Featuring industry-leading session control and management functionality and comprehensive professional services, the solution enables IT organizations to deploy highly secure, reliable and scalable IP contact center networks quickly and cost-effectively while providing a solid foundation for emerging communications technologies and enabling consistent customer experiences across mobile and fixed networks. 2
SOLUTION BENEFITS Accelerate contact center modernization with a turn-key infrastructure solution and implementation services Improve service agility and contain costs by leveraging private IP WANs, SIP trunks, and the Internet Optimize service quality, reliability, and costs with rich session control and policy management Deliver superior customer experiences with real-time, end-to-end monitoring, analysis and troubleshooting Mitigate risks and ensure business continuity with comprehensive security and fraud detection/prevention Increase efficiency and productivity with Web services application integration capabilities Ensure success by leveraging expertise and proven solutions from a market leader Critical IP Contact Center Deployment Challenges Enterprises face a variety of complex connectivity, security, and control challenges when integrating diverse IP contact center elements (IP-PBXs, UC servers, IVRs, ACDs, call recorders) or extending real-time communications sessions across IP network borders: Connectivity IT teams often encounter issues interconnecting IP contact center elements supplied by different vendors, supporting third-party applications or endpoints, or interfacing with SIP trunking services and hosted/cloud-based services. Even though SIP has emerged as the industry-standard signaling protocol for real-time IP communications, it is not uncommon for vendors to introduce solutions that are SIP-compliant, yet incompatible. Third party end-points may be unable to register with contact center call managers, and IP contact center elements, services, and endpoints may support different codecs. Going forward, IT teams will need to provide support for emerging communications technologies such as WebRTC that promise to deliver consistent customer experiences across fixed and mobile environments. Security SIP trunks and Internet-facing services open the enterprise to a wide range of threats and service quality concerns, including denial of service attacks and toll fraud. Attackers can leverage public domain scanners and reconnaissance tools to identify and exploit security weaknesses from inside or outside the enterprise. They may try to manipulate signaling or media flows, disrupt network infrastructure, eavesdrop on confidential exchanges, or commit service theft. Conventional IP security devices firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention systems, and anti-malware solutions weren t designed to control real-time IP communications sessions and don t address the unique security or service quality concerns associated with real-time communications. Limited Control End-to-end IP contact center networks introduce a variety of session management and control challenges. Many contact centers record calls for quality assurance, training, or compliance purposes. Conventional call recording solutions, originally designed for legacy TDM environments, capture calls on the station side by mirroring calls to a PBX/ACD port - an inefficient and expensive approach. Migrating to IP also introduces a variety of support challenges. Identifying, isolating, and resolving VoIP signaling and 3
call quality issues across vendors and service boundaries can be a manually intensive, error-prone proposition. Oracle s Contact Center Solution The Oracle Acme Packet IP Contact Center solution is specifically designed to address the complex connectivity, security, and control challenges enterprises typically encounter when integrating diverse IP contact center elements or extending real-time IP communications sessions across network borders. The solution is based on the Oracle Acme Packet enterprise architecture, a layered communications architecture that connects people, secures interactions, and controls information. Designed to be extensible and scalable, the architecture includes an access layer that provides easy connectivity to contact center services for remote agents and customers; a core layer that controls disparate contact center systems and simplifies interoperability; and a services layer that enables straightforward integration with contact center applications and third-party services. Figure 1: Oracle Acme Packet Enterprise Communications Architecture The Oracle Acme Packet IP Contact Center solution tightly integrates key portfolio products and services to connect, secure, and control IP contact center networks. Enterprise Session Director (ESD) The ESD is an enterprise session border controller that secures access to wide area network services, including SIP trunks and the public Internet. It protects against security threats, normalizes protocol differences between network services, adapts to variations in media encoding, and provides media and signaling encryption as well as NAT and firewall traversal for Internet-connected users. It also supports Session 4
Recording Protocol (SIPREC) media forking to centralize and consolidate call recording functions. Interactive Session Recorder (ISR) The ISR is specifically designed to overcome the unique challenges associated with capturing, securing, archiving and managing real-time communication session recordings. The versatile product supports flexible storage and archival options, and multiple session types (voice, chat, and video) and recording options, and integrates seamlessly with other SIPREC-compatible products, including ESD. The ISR is ideal for regulatory compliance and quality assurance recording applications as contact centers transition to IP. Enterprise Communications Broker (ECB) The ECB composes the network core layer, connecting multivendor contact center elements, alleviating incompatibilities, and simplifying integration with cloud-based applications. It supports industry-standard APIs that enable external applications to control the multivendor enterprise communications environment (e.g. to add click-to-call functionality to a CRM application) and a registrar to enable access to services by thirdparty endpoints. Application Session Controller (ASC) The ASC is an integrated communications controller and Web application server that orchestrates and controls real-time voice and video communications using Web services. An advanced server-based software product, the ASC is designed to enable real-time communications between Web browsers (including WebRTC), business applications, and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based communications systems Palladion Enterprise Palladion Enterprise is a real-time, end-to-end service monitoring, troubleshooting and analytics product that provides unprecedented visibility into IP contact center networks. It proactively monitors the network, capturing all signaling messages, providing call quality metrics and full end-to-end correlation of all calls in real time. It also detects and prevents telephony fraud and service theft. With the Oracle Acme Packet IP Contact Center solution businesses can implement end-to-end IP contact center networks that reduce CAPEX and OPEX and optimize agent productivity and customer satisfaction. Oracle Acme Packet s Comprehensive Implementation Service helps businesses streamline the implementation of the Oracle Acme Packet IP Contact Center solution, 5
providing extensive project management, pre-installation planning, on-site implementation, and post implementation remote consulting services. Oracle Acme Packet Professional Services engineers bring broad industry experience and best practices to network design and implementation, helping enterprises reduce deployment complexity and risk, so they can achieve desired operational and business objectives effectively and on schedule. Figure 2: Oracle Acme Packet Contact Center Solution Key Solution Features Connect Comprehensive protocol normalization functions mitigate connectivity issues across multivendor elements. Powerful Header Manipulation Rules (HMRs) help IT teams solve more complex interoperability challenges by adding, modifying, or deleting headers or parameters in SIP messages. Extensive media fix-up and transcoding functions enable compatibility between disparate contact center elements such as UC servers and IVR systems, SIP trunking services, and remote/mobile SIP endpoints. Media streams can be converted to a 6
variety of compressed and uncompressed formats. Optional hardware assist enables large-scale media transcoding without impacting service quality or performance. Seamless NAT and firewall traversal allows contact centers to incorporate Internetbased agents with minimal burden to the help desk. Web applications and APIs enable users to access contact center applications from WebRTC browsers, and enables courtesy call-back and call reconstitution (reestablish dropped calls automatically). Secure Protects IP contact center infrastructure, services, and applications, ensuring session confidentiality and integrity, and service availability. Guards against malicious attacks and telephony spam as well as system overloads and other service-impacting events. Unique architecture delivers the QoS required for real-time communications sessions while maintaining strong security. Dedicated network and signaling processing resources detect and block DoS attacks while continuing to forward valid sessions. In real time, signaling and media associated with each session are fully terminated, inspected, and re-originated to protect against protocol fuzzing, eavesdropping, hijacking and other attacks. High-performance media and signaling encryption ensures confidentiality for Internet-based agents and outsourcers. Detects and prevents telephony fraud and service theft. Unlike conventional CDR analysis solutions, which simply examine call records after the fact, passive network probes proactively analyze network traffic in real time. Flexible rules and scoring systems allow administrators to set policies, customize actions, and weed out false positives. By analyzing calls over time and learning user behavior, unusual calling patterns symptomatic of telecom fraud can be efficiently detected and prevented. Control Layered architecture with distinct core routing and control makes the contact center network more reliable, cost-effective, and easier to manage. Allows elimination of costly take-back-and-transfer fees by redirecting calls across the corporate IP network. Improves coverage and contains costs by routing sessions across geographically distributed contact centers with independent ACD implementations. Enables reduction of PSTN termination fees by routing outbound calls across SIP trunk service providers (least cost routing) and ensures service continuity by routing around SIP trunk outages. 7
Reduces the cost and complexity of capturing calls for compliance, training, or quality control purposes by centralizing and consolidating IP session recording functions. SIPREC session forking, with load balancing and alternative routing, enables optimal performance and reliability for IP session recording. Stateful high availability configurations enable continuous service in the event of hardware or interface failures. Provides key performance indicators, metrics, and alerts on every session flowing through the network, in real-time and at great scale. Network administrators can identify, isolate, and resolve service quality issues across multivendor networks often before performance problems are detected by end-users. Table 1. Enterprise Session Director Feature Advanced DoS and overload protection SIP protocol normalization IP address and SIP signaling concealment, layer 2-5 topology hiding, signaling and media encryption Transcoding Optional 1-to-1 HA Least cost routing QoS-based routing SDP and DTMF manipulation, transport and encryption interworking SIPREC session forking, with load balancing and alternative routing Embedded Palladion probe Benefit Maintain high level of service availability Accelerate SIP trunk deployment Protect IP network, IT infrastructure and communications Optimize WAN bandwidth, enable compatibility with diverse endpoints and SIP trunking services Provide seamless recovery from equipment or network failure Minimize costs Optimize service quality Mitigate system incompatibilities Fork media to ISR or other recorders; Route around hardware or network failures to ensure continuous service availability Simplifies deployment of Palladion service monitoring 8
Table 2. Interactive Session Recorder Feature Comprehensive session recording Simple REST and VoiceXML APIs SIPREC Flexible storage and archival options Secure Web dashboard Optional high availability configuration Comprehensive session recording Simple REST and VoiceXML APIs Benefit Record any type of real-time IP session: voice, instant messaging, video Rapid integration with external applications and systems Standards-based solution for consolidated recording Works with existing NAS and/or SAN environments Efficiently manage and replay recordings Local or geographic redundancy Record any type of real-time IP session: voice, instant messaging, video Rapid integration with external applications and systems Table 3. Enterprise Communications Broker Feature Multivendor protocol normalization Centralized session routing Load balancing and alternative routing Call admission control Optional 1:1 high availability Multivendor protocol normalization Centralized session routing Load balancing and alternative routing Benefit Resolve multivendor interoperability issues; accelerate deployment; protect and extend previous investments Control and optimize session routing based on identity, costs, QoS or other parameters Route around hardware or network failures to ensure continuous service availability Protect against system overloads Seamless recovery from equipment or network failures Resolve multivendor interoperability issues; accelerate deployment; protect and extend previous investments Control and optimize session routing based on identity, costs, QoS or other parameters Route around hardware or network failures to ensure continuous service availability 9
Table 4. Application Session Controller Feature Web services APIs Advanced service orchestration w/flexible session control and routing policies Extensible logging Session control for signaling and media Web services APIs Advanced service orchestration w/flexible session control and routing policies Extensible logging Session control for signaling and media Benefit Simplifies and accelerates application development; facilitates integration with cloud-based applications and services Control calls based on business logic; integrate unified communications into business processes and Web sites Improves compliance Eliminates external media servers and gateways Simplifies and accelerates application development; facilitates integration with cloud-based applications and services Control calls based on business logic; integrate unified communications into business processes and Web sites Improves compliance Eliminates external media servers and gateways 10
Table 5. Palladion Enterprise Feature Simple, intuitive GUI Quickly and easily isolates users and network issues In-depth root cause analysis for signaling and media issues Lightweight deployment with no provisioning required Automatic alias detection Real-time fraud detection option Self-learning Works fully agnostic of the attack method Benefit Reduce customer care costs Improve incident response time Analyze past problems Implement rapidly Integrate with existing infrastructure Minimize loss due to fraudulent activity Minimize monitoring efforts Provide comprehensive network protection Table 6. Oracle Professional Services Feature Project management Preinstallation planning Onsite implementation service Optional 1-to-1 HA Least cost routing Postimplementation remote consulting Benefit Ensure all installation phases are fully managed and all tasks are completed for each installation phase according to the customer s schedule Optimize SIP trunk deployment to meet the customer s operational requirements Ensure successful and seamless deployment into production Ensure seamless recovery from equipment or network failure Minimize costs Provide ongoing support during service rollout 11
Conclusion To succeed in today s hypercompetitive business environment, communication companies must become hyperconnected enterprises using communications to attain never-before-achieved levels of customer engagement, employee productivity, and competitive advantage. Oracle s contact center solution is designed to enable this type of enterprise. Connecting users and agents across SIP trunks, securing all real-time interactions, and controlling the user experience, Oracle s contact center solution is based on a layered communications architecture that is application vendor neutral and centralizes services and policy enforcement for a highly open, scalable and extensible network. 12
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