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This article originally appeared in ScreenPlays Magazine, 15 January 2008.
January 15, 2008 – MetaSwitch today introduces MetaSphere CommPortal Assistant, latest in a growing lineup of thin-client applications designed to make enhanced service provider telephone service applications easy for customers to manage from their desktop taskbar tray.
User-friendly communications service user interfaces (UIs) integrated into familiar desktop experiences are a critical component of the industry’s ability to serve small and medium business (SMB) customers and enterprise branch offices that cannot afford on-site IT and private business exchange (PBX) expertise or equipment.
Driven by the cable industry’s emerging push into commercial services, and increasingly by voice ISPs and incumbent phone carriers now moving to serve smaller businesses, the sources of SMB communications UIs include BroadSoft’s BroadWorks Assistant, CommuniGate Systems’ Pronto! and now MetaSwitch’s CommPortal Assistant.
CommPortal Assistant works with MetaSwitch’s MetaSphere Service Delivery Platform unveiled last summer to enable cable or telco operators to host a range of enhanced communications features. The product is in carrier field trials today and will be generally available to all MetaSwitch customers in March.
“We remain impressed by MetaSwitch’s commitment to developing new features on the MetaSphere platform that encourage subscriber loyalty,” says Don Helms, vice president, commercial telephone services, Bresnan Communications. “CommPortal Assistant increases Bresnan’s already compelling and feature-rich services for both consumers and business customers as convergence has increased, making computers as much a communications tool as traditional phone service.”
CommPortal Assistant works in tandem with MetaSwitch’s existing CommPortal desktop application and CommPortal Web 2.0 service management portal, and it is tightly integrated into the Windows user interface. Essentially a mini-application resident in the taskbar of the Windows UI, it enables a range of “always on” interactive capabilities including click-to dial through Microsoft Outlook contact lists, remote office support, voice and fax message notification and retrieval, and setting management. Because it resides in the taskbar, it requires no login while a user is occupied with other business applications.
“Based on feedback from customers, we streamlined the client to be very thin,” says MetaSwitch marketing director Carol Daniels. “Business users would find it very easy to use. You can open the full-screen [CommPortal] application, but not everybody wants to do that all the time. This still manages your phones from your taskbar. There will be a lot of further features coming out this year.”
Announced carriers deploying MetaSphere applications like unified communications include AT&T and Embarq. “This can work in cable and telco environments,” Daniels says. “If a cable company is providing voice services, it can have our delivery platform alongside a softswitch other than ours. The bigger the telco operators get, the more difficult it is to migrate from their legacy switches to softswitches, but carriers want to get some applications out there now to be competitive.”
At the same time, MetaSwitch is unveiling the MetaView Network Management System designed to enable service providers to apply fault management, pro-active diagnostics and accounting and performance reporting tools to MetaSphers IP communications services without having to invest in network-wide, all-encompassing monitoring systems.
Both CommPortal Assistant the MetaView NMS are designed to support services delivered from any softswitch or legacy Class 5 switch. “We have a number of customers using just MetaSphere and not our softswitch,” Daniels says.
“You don’t see a lot of monitoring systems in IP because they are a major monetary commitment, while here they can do this with a minimal investment,” she says. “The last thing they need to worry about in a competitive environment is a flood of trouble calls. One of the new things is voice quality monitoring, enabling operators to stay ahead of any kind of service deterioration with alarms and alarm correlation to locate degradations and fix them before a customer call.”
Copyright ScreenPlays Magazine, 15 January, 2008