Covergence Session Manager provides hosted contact centre service with cost savings and increased call control though the deployment of a SIP trunking solution

LONDON, UK, July 14, 2008 – Covergence®, the leading provider of next generation Session Border Control solutions, today announced that Mtel, a leading Dutch hosted contact centre services provider, has selected the Covergence Session Manager (CSM) to deliver a single point of policy enforcement for real-time applications used within its Whizper online contact centre services. The Covergence Session Manager will enable Mtel to increase the flexibility and scalability of its on-demand hosted contact centre services through utilising the advantages of the SIP protocol between customers’ contact centre and their remote agents. This provides significant cost savings and eliminates the need to route calls over legacy infrastructure and the public telephone network (PSTN).

Mtel provides an on-demand multi-channel contact centre solution for enterprises, providing ultimate flexibility, scalability and reliability. Mtel is using the session management features of the CSM to dynamically route calls, monitor Quality of Service (QoS), security, Network Address Translation (NAT) and collection of call detail records.

“When it comes to delivering hosted on-demand voice services to some of the region’s biggest companies, reliability, scalability and cost are all critical,” said Leon Schuurmans, CCO, Mtel.  “It’s not enough to just have an IP architecture, you have to be able to control and manage it so you can be certain that you can deliver on your promised customer experience.” 

The Covergence Session Manager, a super-set of traditional Session Border Controllers (SBCs), is designed specifically to address the challenges of the most vulnerable region of IP networks – the access edge. Enterprises are moving rapidly towards the deployment of SIP trunks because they provide a direct connection between an IP device and service provider IP network, eliminating the need to connect to the PSTN. The Covergence Session Manager ensures interoperability between a wide range of SIP trunking solutions and IP PBXs enabling Mtel to quickly deploy secure, manageable SIP trunks to take advantage of reduced costs and accelerate the deployment of additional new on demand services.  Covergence Session Manager is the most comprehensive solution available for controlling, managing and protecting carrier and enterprise SIP trunks.

“As businesses look to take full advantage of the power of IP-based Unified Communications, so issues such as cost reduction, dynamic scaling and communications-enabling new services are coming under real scrutiny,” said Steve Harris, Managing Director, EMEA, Covergence.  “However, for the real benefits, this move to IP has to be end-to-end which means keeping calls on SIP from beginning to end.  Linking together these islands of IP within an organisation through SIP trunking is critical to truly unleashing the efficiencies of IP-based communications.  We’re delighted by the success of Mtel in using the Covergence Session Manager to deliver a single point of control throughout their organisation and in delivering mission critical services to their own blue chip enterprise customers.”

Further reinforcing its credentials in managing SIP trunking for both service providers and enterprises, Covergence has attained SIPconnect Compliance Certification from the SIP Forum. This validates that CSM complies with the SIPconnect reference architecture, protocols features, and rules necessary for seamless peering between SIP-enabled IP PBXs and SIP-enabled VoIP service providers.  Introduced by the SIP Forum, the SIPconnect Compliant Program was created to help validate and ensure multimedia communication interoperability among IP communications equipment manufacturers, software providers and service providers, as well as to promote further adoption of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) as the standard for IP-based communications. Launched in March 2008, the Covergence SIP Trunking Interoperability program www.covergence.com/advantage) ensures interoperability between a wide range of Service Provider SIP Trunking solutions and PBXs and its award-winning Covergence Session Manager (CSM).