The Hindu Business Line : Interactive Intelligence launches communications solution in India

INDIANAPOLIS-based telecom product company, Interactive Intelligence has entered the Indian IP-PBX (Internet Protocol Private Branch eXchange) market with a complete communications solution for medium and large enterprises.

The product, Enterprise Interaction Centre, integrates the PSTN (public switched telephone network) and the broadband network, and also offers futuristic features such as presence management and unified messaging.

With a SIP (session initiation protocol) gateway, employees of an organisation can remain connected wherever they are. One can programme the software to indicate one's status (such as 'Away from Desk, On Vacation) to callers. This is called presence management.

Unified messaging enables all messages, e-mails and alerts to be made available at one location - similar to Outlook. Hence, there will be no lack of space compared to other voicemail services.

Video, however, is still too big, but will work within an office's LAN, said Mr V. Krishnamachari, Business Development Manager, South Asia, Interactive Intelligence Inc.

Contact centres spend 35 per cent of the operational costs on their telecom set-up, said Mr David Ong, Regional Director, Marketing and Channel Development, Asia Pacific and Japan. Most are on a traditional set-up of a PBX connected to their fax machines, interactive voice response system and voice mails. Some have migrated to an IP-based system, but many are unaware of the benefits of VoIP and SIP, said Mr Krishnamachari.

This solution can reduce communication costs for medium enterprises by up to 70 per cent, said Mr Ong. The company is targeting contact centres and IT companies (service and product) in the APAC region.

Enterprise Interaction Centre (EIC) is based on Intel's silicon and Microsoft's applications. The company plans to port EIC to Linux in a year's time.

The company expects to make sales worth $300,000-400,000 by the end of this year.

Interactive Intelligence is a Nasdaq-listed company and its 2004 revenues were $56 million.

The company employs 350 people worldwide and recently named Tecnomic Marketing Services its distributor in India.

There 18 Indian clients and this number expected to rise to 40 by the end of 2006, said Mr Ong.