The once distinct disciplines of telecommunications and application development are intersecting as organizations begin to integrate voice communications, instant messaging, presence and other real-time capabilities into business applications built on open standard server platforms utilizing Web Services.

The business driver for Communications-Enabled Business Processes (CEBP) is the need to create more dynamic and agile organizations that can respond rapidly to ever-changing business requirements with applications to both increase employee productivity and improve customer satisfaction. The technological enablers of CEBP are:

Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) - which makes it possible for developers and integrators to weave voice, video, presence, click-to-call, call routing, Web conferencing and other real-time services directly into applications and process flows.

Real-time Session Management - which enables organizations to dynamically control real-time sessions from their business applications, using standard web services protocols ensuring that real-time communications comply with internal security policies, business practices and external regulations.

Dynamic Control of Real-time Sessions with Covergence Session Manager

The robust Web Services interface of Covergence Session Manager (CSM) enables organizations to integrate seamlessly in a SOA framework and to control real-time sessions from their business applications dynamically, using standard web services protocols such as SOAP, XML and WSDL in both J2EE and .NET environments. Simply stated, CSM’s Web Services capability makes real-time sessions "programmable” from business applications.

CSM provides a Web Service interface for every CSM operation such as:

• Set configuration parameters
• Get status information
• Inbound/outbound call control (i.e., make, terminate, record, fork, etc.)

This enables authenticated systems to dynamically and uniformly enforce policy over any or all real-time sessions.

Organizations are already taking advantage of the CSM Web Services interface to streamline the sales-customer communications process. One customer, for example, has integrated their CRM system via CSM Web Services so that sales reps can make outbound calls directly from the CRM application. The new, enhanced application will now let sales reps:

• Utilize point-and-click to select the customer he or she wants to speak with and initiates and connects the call via the CSM
• If the call is directed into voice mail, the sales rep clicks on a "Leave Voicemail" button to deliver a pre-recorded voice mail played out by the CSM
• The sales rep can immediately move onto the next call while the CSM, in parallel, delivers a pre-recorded message into the previous customer's voice mail system

With this simple call control addition to the CRM system, the solution has an immediate and profound impact on the efficiency of this customer's sales force. If communications-enabling applications is on your agenda, make sure your applications can control calls dynamically with CSM Web Services.