An industry association to promote computer-integrated telephony technology has been announced. The Enterprise Computer Telephony Forum says it is an open consortium of industry suppliers, developers and users that aims to work toward the implementation of computer-telephony integration technology based on international de facto and de jure standards. Charter members of the forum include Dialogic Corp, Digital Equipment Corp, Ericsson Business Networks AB, Hewlett-Packard Co and Northern Telecom Ltd. According to NorTel’s Tom Zenisek, the forum president and chairman of the board, while there are several piecemeal protocols and standards for bridging computing and telecommunications, there is still no consensus on how they can or should be implemented. He added that the rapid growth of the computer-telephony integration industry made it unrealistic to expect a single consistently-designed set of standards in the near future, hence the need for suppliers, developers, and users to agree on practical interoperability techniques and technologies to satisfy the CTI needs of the enterprise via the Forum. It says it will not be limited to a single implementation model, unlike the Microsoft Corp-Intel Corp Telephony Application Programming Interface – TAPI – (CI No 2,457), designed for the Windows environment, and the joint AT&T Corp-Novell Inc Telephony Services Application Programming Interface – TSAPI – (CI No 2,383), supported by the Versit alliance (CI No 2,556), which is specific to NetWare. Rather, says the Forum, it will work to promote standard implementations for these and other elements needed for computer-telephony integration, and provide input to the standards development process and facilitate industry consensus on standards implementation.
Set of standards
Both Versit and TAPI members have endorsed the Forum, which will also own the Signal Computing System Architecture – SCSA (CI No 2,120) – and the Tmap (TAPI-TSAPI Mapping Software) initiatives. SCSA, an industry initiative supported by more than 260 companies, including the five charter members of the Forum, defines an open service provider infrastructure to support applications developed to application programming interfaces such as TAPI and TSAPI, and augment them with media processing services, while Tmap was developed by NorTel to provide interoperability between TAPI and TSAPI. The results of the Forum’s activities will be made available to all interested parties on non-discriminatory terms, it says, and it may develop, own, or deliver other protocols, as long as they are made available to all on the same non-discriminatory terms. The Forum will be open to participation by any interested suppliers, developers and users of computer-telephony integration products and services. Three forms of membership will be available: Principal Members, entitled to representation on working and advisory committees with voting rights in Forum, paying an annual fee of $10,000 per company; User Members, who will be allowed to participate in committees that address user issues, paying $1,500 a year; and firms interested in monitoring Forum activities, who can become Auditing Members for an annual fee of $1,500, but will not have voting or committee membership rights. An informational meeting to solicit participation will be held on April 26 in Atlanta, during Comdex Spring ’95.
