Communications as a Service

This blog entry was posted by Ed Margulies, Senior Director, Multichannel Platforms at Oracle. Margulies is a telecommunications architect, usability expert, inventor, and the author of 17 books on telecommunications, contact centers and service automation. The views expressed in this blog are Margulies’ and do not necessarily reflect the views of Oracle.

Human Factors Meets Self Service

Communications as a Service offers not only an opportunity to leverage network infrastructure for your basic communications needs, but often provides an outlet customer self service. For example, you can find hosted billing platforms, knowledge bases and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems in CaaS. But hosted and more traditional on-premises solutions have something in common: Human beings are the biggest users of self service systems, not machines. All too often, applications offering automation are designed too logically - as if only machines had to understand the interface. Here are five best practices for making sure the human side of self service is front and center.

Give Humans a Way Out

A software routine has the capacity to tolerate being told it can only do one thing. That’s because machines and software are not often imbued with human characteristics such as frustration or impatience. Humans, on the other hand, demand options. And one of those options is to bail out of the transaction if they don’t like where it’s going. This is true of web-based transactions and voice-based transactions.

On the web side, it is a best practice to offer web callback, web chat, or email options as an alternate means to bail out of a failed or frustrating self-service transaction. Web Callbacks offer a simple form into which the user plugs their phone number and a good time to call back. This is transferred to the contact center and an automated call is set up between an agent and the customer. Web chat offers a real time way to promote a conversation between the user and an agent. Most web chat programs allow agents to carry on more than one private chat simultaneously and have their own self-service routines such as automated FAQ screen pushes.

At the very least, a simple pop-up or URL redirect to a contact page with phone numbers is suggested. Of course this pushes the user to an expensive (Contact Center) opt-out but this is better than “hiding” your number which only produces an angry caller when they finally do find the number.

On the phone side, IVR systems need to allow for an operator revert, sometimes called a “zero out” to an agent. You don’t have to speak this option on the first dialog turn, but it should always be hiding in the background in case a user intuits that “0” (the universal touch tone key for operator) is invoked. It is considered a bad practice to “hide” the zero or ignore it. It is even worse to say “invalid key” when someone hits zero to bail out of an IVR transaction. Always give the option, but design your menus so well, that fewer people use it. This is the number one rule of a good IVR system above all else.

Organize Tasks by Popularity

It is a best practice to organize task by popularity both in the spatial and temporal domains. For example, if you run a utility and your web site statistics indicate that most people choose to view their outstanding bill in favor of any other function – it stands to reason that upon sign-in, customers would automatically see their billing information.

This is not so obvious over the phone, because unlike the spatial domain of a web site, users cannot quickly scan a page to “see” what’s going on. Instead, they are typically presented with a verbal menu and therefore must listen and chose. In this case, it is a best practice automatically provide a “data burst” of account information upon proper user verification. Subsequent menus can be arranged to provide choices ranked by popularity with an “other” option at the end to keep the choices short.

Who are you and What do you Want

A simple question: “Who are you and what do you want” is a great setup for another best practice and that is to automate based on the historical profile of the customer. For example, if a web customer has established that they always travel four clicks into the taxonomy of a web site and always end up in a certain place – it makes sense to shorten their path on subsequent visits. This can be achieved by inserting breadcrumb information into cookies or by tagging their user profile upon sign-in with a landing page preference.

Likewise, you can set up a sophisticated IVR system to anticipate user preferences by loading historical menu choice selections into a “dynamic menu” table on behalf of that customer. Modern systems have the ability to trigger a dynamic menu jump-to instruction by keying in on the Caller ID of the customer. The same can be done based on explicit user verification with a password or biometric (speech) verification.

Don’t Automate Emotional or Highly Complex Tasks

It is a good idea to set-aside highly complex or emotional transactions for live intervention. For example, if a customer wants a refund, it can be especially aggravating for the customer if you try to automate that process. Customers often need to “vent” and they can’t do that with a machine. Web site menu selections and IVR selections dealing with refunds or other emotionally-charged choices should therefore provide a quick and easy path to a live person.

Highly complex tasks should also take the route of human intervention unless you have a means to make it very quick and painless in an automated context. An example from the financial services industry would be a customer who wants to increase his or her credit line. This seemingly simple task of getting a credit line increase is in reality very complex. It requires a review of spending and payment patterns, perhaps a review of income, a credit check, supervisor permission and most often a discussion including cross-sell or a different product.

When you take these examples into consideration, it is easy to see why it pays to cull out emotional or highly complex tasks from you automation candidates – because in most cases, automating them simply leads to frustration.

Limitations of Human Short Term Memory

During the 30-second span of human short-term memory, it has been generally established that we humans can only remember about seven “chunks” of information. This notion is popularized by the oft-quoted paper “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information,” written by cognitive psychologist George Miller of Princeton University's Department of Psychology in 1956.

Simply put, you can’t cram ten items in a single IVR menu because the caller will only remember the first thing said and maybe the last two things said – and not remember anything in the middle. This is made more difficult in touch-tone systems because you have to remember not only the menu choice, but the touch-tone number associated with it. That brings the actual discrete choices to remember down to three or four. Speech-based systems may ameliorate some of this memory chunking concern, but they are no panacea. You must still keep your menu selections short no matter if they follow a directed dialog or an open dialog.

You may think a web site eliminates this concern, but it does not. It is still a best practice to limit menu choices on web sites by “chunking” information into top-level categories. This is why you often see on well-designed web sites the use of mouse-over drop-down menus or fly-outs or exploding menu items. This is done to lighten the cognitive load on the user.

In summary there are simple best practices you can put in to place that will ensure a more human experience with your self-service outlets. Remember that humans need a way out and don't like to deal with a machine when they are angry or have a complex task to do. Keep in mind that humans are creatures of habit and you can take advantage of that by serving-up their favorite items at each visit. Try to arrange menus and selections so the most popular tasks are popped-up or talked about first. And perhaps most importantly, don't overload a human's short-term memory. If you follow the five top human factors examples here, you are well on your way to the human side of self service.

This blog entry was posted by Ed Margulies, Senior Director, Product Management CRM Service Products at Oracle. Margulies is a telecommunications architect, usability expert, inventor, and the author of 17 books on telecommunications, contact centers and service automation. The views expressed in this blog are Margulies’ and do not necessarily reflect the views of Oracle.

CaaS: A Big Telecommuting Enabler

Communications as a Service is the right concept for at-home and remote workers. With applications ranging from contact center, customer relationship management and content management, thousands of job functions can be virtualized. In fact for some workers and even some companies, virtualization is quickly becoming a standard way to run companies. This accounts for both small and large companies.

Common Access Standards and Help Desk

Besides the more obvious issues of human capital and how to manage a remote workforce, it is a best practice to standardize on access methods and a means to troubleshoot those connections.

As a starting point, it is a good idea to establish a basic broadband connection standard. Increasingly, this can be done with wireless connections for a mobile workforce and economical cell phone and data broadband services can be negotiated with your favorite carrier. For at-home workers, a standard for DSL, satellite or cable connection is all you need. But it is easier for your IT Help Desk staff to support remote workers if everyone is using the same basic service. If this is not possible, you can still standardize on access packages. For example, you may want everyone using a connection that is at least 256 to 500Kbps and be willing to pay for whatever package allows that connection speed.

You also need to set up your corporate data network to allow remote access to your data stores. This will require separate tunneling or VPN software available from most networking vendors. It is important to make sure all of your remote workers have the ability to log on to this remote access software with regularly-changing passwords. Your IT Help Desk staff needs to be well-versed in basic PC troubleshooting, home networking, broadband modems, access services and VPN technology. If your staff is not set up to do this, consider outsourcing that capability so your remote workers have somewhere to turn when something goes wrong. This is crucial because every hour of down time for your remote staff is an hour work is not getting done.

I recommend doing a small, workgroup trial of both “remote worker beta testers” and also the Help Desk staff who would be their lifeline. This will help you to get all the kinks out before rolling the remote technology out to the whole workforce.

Social Apps and the Virtual Water Cooler

Nowadays, there is no reason why remote workers should be segregated or cut off from the rest of your employees. There are simple and direct ways to keep them in touch with one another to keep the social bond between them active. For example, you can set up your own social networking site or use sites that are available on the internet. You can encourage members of each time to interact by posting information about their projects (security allowing of course), asking for feedback from customers and readers, and by posting blogs.

In addition to non-real-time social networking sites, you can also encourage employee-to-employee communication with internal or public Instant Messaging (IM). While there is certain utility in sending short messages to one another, it is also useful in replacing the emotional gratification once supplied by chats at the water cooler. IM can be the “virtual water cooler” for a whole new generation of remote workers.

It is a best practice to encourage social interaction amongst your remote workers and to publish basic guidelines for these types of communications. These guidelines can point out issues dealing with company privacy, ethics and general on line etiquette. Of course, workers’ personal productivity will dictate how much water cooler activity is appropriate. One thing’s for sure, you cannot cut people off from socializing or it will hurt morale and generally cause a lack in productivity.

Remote Peer Review

Consider bolstering your peer review procedures to benefit remote workers. You can use file sharing, white boarding, email and web sharing applications to facilitate peer review, so there is little in the way from a technology point of view. What matters is a regular, and frequent review of one another’s’ work from co workers. This helps to engender not only a spirit of teamwork, but also encourages high-quality output.

For example, consider the development of an outline for a user guide. Before getting started on the rich content of such a document, the author can host a working session on line and with a conference call where one or two co-workers can brainstorm the table of contents and chief topics. In some cases, this may be all some people need to get on the right track. This is also useful for a project manager to establish key milestones for a complex project, or for synthesizing input for a sales pitch or a product demo. It doesn’t matter what the nature of the project is. What matters is a standard way to approach, define, and solicit input at crucial steps along the way. It is a best practice, then, to put together simple guidelines for the approach and kickoff of virtually any project. You can build more examples as your remote workers begin to participate in remote peer reviews.

Weekly Cross-Team Meetings

Cross-Team meetings are a great way to develop trust and interactivity between remote workers. For the remote worker, having transparency with their work product as well as others also engenders a spirit of accountability. A basic cross team meeting is hosted by a facilitator – usually the same person each week. It is a best practice to establish a ‘same day – same time’ schedule for these meetings so there is no misunderstanding about who is supposed to show up when.

A common and effective best practice is to agree on a common template for presentation materials so each department has one slide or one graph to present each week. A remote file locker can be set up for each participant to upload their part of the presentation ahead of time.

Content-wise, it is best to limit each department’s contribution to one slide. For example, the sales team can show a grid of hot prospects and needs they have for other teams to fulfill in helping to close deals. The support department might have a slide that addresses customer satisfaction issues or support newsflashes. Development may have a slide to show the status of a new feature release. The idea is to give each department a few minutes to present their part and have enough time after each mini-presentation for questions and answers. Any big issues requiring more discussion can be handled in breakout sessions for the stakeholders involved.

In summary, you can enable a productive and well-adjusted workforce by following a few simple principles. Make sure you establish standards and basic nuts and bolts support services so everyone can be connected. Encourage electronic forms of social interaction. And encourage regular and standard ways for your workers to review one another’s work products and share ideas in cross-team meetings. By following these simple principles and providing guidelines for appropriate use, you can develop a strong and productive telecommuting workforce.

This blog entry was posted by Ed Margulies, Senior Director, Product Management CRM Service Products at Oracle. Margulies is a telecommunications architect, usability expert, inventor, and the author of 17 books on telecommunications, contact centers and service automation. The views expressed in this blog are Margulies’ and do not necessarily reflect the views of Oracle.

Centrex: A CaaS Heritage

Centrex service is an excellent example of how CaaS-based offerings are successfully married to enterprise-based, on-premises applications. New York Telephone realized this 40 years ago. In the mid-sixties, this its customers asked for an alternative to the massive on-site switchboards of the day. New York Telephone’s engineering department then added simple extension dial and transfer capabilities to their central office switches. These features allowed on-site phone extensions from the central office to act like an on-site switchboard system. And Centrex was born.

Early Centrex service came with large multi-button operator turrets and intermediary answering positions. Later, more sophisticated Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) applications such as the Pinnacle ACD option (AT&T 5ESS option) were developed. Even more heavy-duty uses of ACD SaaS offerings were co-mingled with special Emergency 911 software. The on-premises systems handle Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) duty. Here the calling number ID passed by the Centrex system is used in conjunction with a computer-assisted dispatch (CAD) system. These CAD systems provide heads-up maps and other displays so the emergency dispatcher can use the map data to advise the best available responders.

Centrex meets on site Messaging Systems

Another Centrex-based innovation is the Simplified Message Desk Interface (SMDI). Here, the Centrex system sends information over a data channel dealing with line availability, phone call time stamps, forwarding information and the like. This is typically used to couple Centrex service with on-site SMDR (Station Message Detail Recording) call accounting software and on site Voice Messaging systems. The interface is emulated by numerous manufacturers now for interoperating between devices - even if they are not CaaS-based.

Enhanced Services based on Centrex later gave birth to Basic Rate ISDN offerings (now essentially replaced by cable and broadband DSL). The data channel on BRI lines enabled everything from simple file transfer to real-time third party call control for on-site PBXs and custom service center applications. In fact there were offshoots of this based on analog technology.

Centrex and the Birth of Short Message Service

Even Data over Voice technology has facilitated the marriage between CaaS and On-Premises Enterprise software. Data over voice is a way soup-up analog Centrex lines in lieu of the more expensive Basic Rate ISDN. Today this is the very popular Analog Display Service Interface (ADSI). It's also called CLASS (Custom Local Area Signaling Services). There are different versions of this service offering all over the world. It's quaint considering the data is sent on-hook using a simple Bell 202 1200 bit FSK modem circuit.

Now this technology is embedded in everything from Dialogic voice and network cards to televisions and modern single line phones. The applications for the technology are endless taking into account everything from simple Caller ID-based applications to "visual versions" of Interactive Voice Response – a.k.a. SMS and SMS-based services.

Centrex: Incubator for Spatial and Temporal Automation

As you can see, Centrex and associated services have been an incubator for a host of innovations – both in the temporal and spatial domains. On the temporal side, interfaces such as SMDI facilitate voice messaging and IVR (temporal) interfaces for automated services. On the spatial side, ADSI and SMS-type services transfer data visually as in a web site. In fact, you can look at new SMS-based services as kind of a visual version of IVR (Interactive Voice Response). Here the dialog is directed and not as self-directed and spatial as a web page.

The simplicity and convenience of SMS - that is the keypads on your cell phone - make it both ubiquitous and universal like the web. Traditionally, you text a friend or relative and get a simple chat-type dialog going. But now contemplate how an SMS can be sent from your phone to get automated responses from a machine. Companies like Agent511 offer automated applications like this (From your cell phone, text: DEMO to 511-511 for a sample).

So SMS is another medium pretty much dependent on CaaS. And the marriage between CaaS and the enterprise? OK, imagine how an SMS gateway can be used to route messages to an on-premises SMS-equipped ACD (Automatic Call Distributor). In this example, users can use published short codes to send SMS queries to a service center. Those messages are not answered by a single person, but are put into queue so the best-equipped agent can type back a response or push a URL to the "caller."

Companies like Oracle are developing this technology along with its customers and partners. The point is, you don't "own" an SMS even though you may own the telephone that you send it from. And on the other end, enterprise-based and software-controlled systems can respond to your text messages - all piggy-backing on the cell phone provider's SMS network - which in itself is a CaaS-based offering.

In summary, many innovations came out of the simple idea of Centrex. And today, modern CaaS services continue to add value to enterprise applications – just like Centrex has for almost half a century. Whether it’s on-site messaging, Business Intelligence apps, contact center or SMS-based services, the co-mingling of CaaS and the enterprise seems pretty much here to stay.

This blog entry was posted by Ed Margulies, Senior Director, Product Management CRM Service Products at Oracle. Margulies is a telecommunications architect, usability expert, inventor, and the author of 17 books on telecommunications, contact centers and service automation. The views expressed in this blog are Margulies’ and do not necessarily reflect the views of Oracle.

The Not So Obvious Merger

People often ponder the viability of merging hosted communications services with enterprise-based solutions. “Is it really the best of two worlds or something else altogether?” I advocate periodic review of your enterprise software deployments and possible interface points with CaaS. You’ll discover a variety of CaaS-based offerings that merge well with enterprise applications. I’ll cite some popular examples here.

Turning on a CaaS Dime

One of the advantages in merging CaaS and traditional enterprise applications is the speed at which network-based add-ons can be deployed. Let’s say you have five traditional enterprise-based contact centers deployed in as many locations. You know you can achieve an economy of scale by virtually combining all of the agents into one orchestrated pool. But the traditional approach requires special gateway boxes, individual software upgrades, and network planning. Traditional enterprise approaches often require upwards of six months to a year to deploy.

Enter CaaS-based overlay networking. Many telephone companies and ASPs can offer a hosted network routing service that virtualizes the intelligent switching in the network. Instead of five disparate, uncoordinated “brains” in as many locations, the CaaS-based overlay uses existing switches as a path to agent phones. You can still have on-premises, traditional telephone operations and associated software. The difference here is the routing intelligence – which has been pushed into the network itself to virtualize the separate sites into one.

The Kaizen of CaaS

In addition to being fast, CaaS enables incremental improvements as opposed to one big blast of features every few years. One of the chief benefits of CaaS is the ability to deploy read-made service bundles minimizing the “big bang” impact of major enterprise software releases. Since most CaaS services are based on a shared-use multi-tenant model, the software is pre-configured and ready to use. But in most cases on the enterprise side, incremental feature improvements require expensive and time-consuming upgrades. This makes the marriage between CaaS and enterprise software attractive when the next major enterprise release is a year or more away.

Incremental improvements can also mean incremental headaches. But with a good CaaS-based offering, the service provider can buffer you from the rapid changes in technology by testing and staging new technologies first. CaaS platforms offer a viable means for “early adopters” to try new technologies and capabilities without a forklift upgrade and without a big commitment. This means the folks who want to be on the leading edge of new offerings will help the service provider identify defects before the new offer is generally available. For those who are not early adopters, this offers a great deal of comfort by making incremental improvements with minimal risk.

Capital Utilization Relief

Another reason to contemplate a mix of CaaS and traditional enterprise software deals with budgeting and approvals. Sometimes it’s not a matter of choice but rather what your CFO allows you to buy. Let’s say your hardware acquisition budget is capped for the year but you still need to add capabilities you have an urgent need for.

For example, a new product launch is creating an extraordinary call volume into your support department. And you want technicians to handle multiple inquiries simultaneously. You know there are chat products that let your employees handle more than one technical support transaction at the same time. But your CFO says you are not allowed to buy any more traditional premises-based servers. Fortunately there may be funds in the operational expense budget that permit the use of a CaaS-based chat solution on top of your enterprise service application. You can choose from a number of CaaS-based chat offerings in the marketplace. To name a few: Oracle’s Call Center On Demand, Verizon Business’ Web Center and Telstra’s Web CC offering.

Social Apps Tie-In

The internet is ripe with CaaS-based social applications. And many of them find “sockets” to both personal productivity and enterprise applications. Consider popular Voice over IP (VoIP) services, for example. Some clients load in such a way that hyperlinks appear on phone numbers inside of other applications. This means some enterprise applications can link to SaaS-based services with a mouse click on any phone number.

Now consider the multi-party chat rooms and threaded discussion forums on so many social sites. These are all facilitated as a shared service on the internet. But there are extensions of these communications that cascade into enterprise applications. Now, there are many service organizations that offer links between customers and service center technicians or sales associates. These communications often originate in the context of a self-service navigation on a vendor web site. They can help to kick-off chat, email or even phone call transactions.

Web Call-Backs meet the Enterprise

Perhaps a web customer has used the self-service capabilities your web site successfully but still needs a direct communication with a technician or service agent. In this example, the customer clicks a button labeled: “talk with a service agent.” These are often called Web Call-Back or “Click-to-Talk” links. This is a web-based request that automatically triggers an outbound phone call from the agent to the customer’s phone. This technology is just over a decade old and gaining more traction all the time.

Quite often, what links the web site and the phones together is a hosted, CaaS service, not an enterprise application. When the phone call is presented to the agent, a coordinated screen pop with the customer’s profile appears automatically. That screen pop and CRM integration can be on an on-premises enterprise CRM system. Here, the media handling can be hosted in the network, but customer premises-based enterprise software is rendering the customer contact records and associated data.

In summary, there are many examples of how CaaS-based offerings are a natural extension to enterprise applications. By using hosted communications services, you can take advantage of incremental technology improvements, enhance customer care initiatives with operational expense budgets, and avoid the complexities of a traditional on-premises upgrade. You can tie social apps, enterprise apps, and hosted communications apps together. Popular media types such as VoIP, Chat, SMS and emails can be hosted and layered on top of traditional enterprise applications. We are no longer in a world of “either / or” because the best CaaS services play nice with enterprise applications.

This blog entry was posted by Ed Margulies, Senior Director, Product Management CRM Service Products at Oracle. Margulies is a telecommunications architect, usability expert, inventor, and the author of 17 books on telecommunications, contact centers and service automation. The views expressed in this blog are Margulies’ and do not necessarily reflect the views of Oracle.

Earth Day Meet Your New Friend CaaS

I remember participating in my first Earth Day in 1970. I wore a musty army surplus gas mask in protest of pollution. So did about 60 of my grade school friends. The Earth Day idea is simple: Save the earth and rally against its enemies. Today your use and promotion of Communications as a Service is also in the spirit of Earth Day.

This model of modern communications is ripe with examples and ideas of how you can do good for the environment but also save some of the other green in the process.

Data Centers and Counting the Tiles

One of the biggest trends in CaaS is the use of commodity, off-the-shelf servers for communications infrastructure. This versus the proprietary gear traditional telephony switches are based on. With communications backbones more and more based on packet-switched voice instead of TDM, the opportunity to reduce data center footprint is huge.

Here at Oracle, for example, we recently outfitted ten remote data centers with ACD switching gear worldwide. This was done to replace proprietary, traditional ACD switching equipment. All of this was done in a CaaS model, where a network-based service will be used to support over 40 contact centers and home-based agents.

Each data center will house an average of 12 square feet’s worth of common, off-the-shelf 1U servers. That includes front and back access to the racks. Now compare that to the equivalent proprietary cabinets of one of the traditional switch vendors: A whopping 32 square feet. Now consider how much less energy – including air conditioning, lighting, etc. is being saved by using commodity, rack-mounted servers.

Bye-Bye Water Cooler

Another green aspect of Communications as a Service is its impact on human capital. Specifically, CaaS enables a virtual workforce so users do not have to be housed “next to” or in the same building as the communications infrastructure. Yes, I’m referring to telecommuting. This year, it’s estimated that in the U.S. alone, there are about 200,000 remote contact center agents. Depending on which research firm weighing-in, that’s roughly 10% of the contact center workforce, which also accounts for contact center outsourcers.

There is a compelling argument to convert workforces to virtual workers using CaaS. For example, in a 2006 study the Telework Coalition found that companies can save between three and ten thousand dollars per employee per year in real estate rental costs. That includes the actual workspace, common areas, training rooms, etc. averaged out for each employee.

Based on numbers supplied by the Energy Information Administration, my own figuring says upwards of $300 per year per employee can also be saved on utilities as a result.

Converting Windshields to Display Screens

And what about the commute itself? We know that the maximum one-way commute most contact center agents will tolerate is about 20 miles. Accounting for vacations and holidays, that’s about 9,000 miles per year. Based on gas mileage of 25 mpg, that’s 360 gallons. Figuring $2.50 per gallon this converts to a savings of $900 annually for each worker. Besides the savings that’s also 360 gallons worth of hydrocarbons and other pollutants that don’t spew into the atmosphere – for each worker.

Green Means Retention Too

Some of the top analysts say that the job turnover rate amongst telecommuting workers is only half that of in-house, commuting workers. This is significant when you consider the cost of turnover. On average, it costs at least $5,000 per employee to acquire and train a replacement.

That can add up to significant savings. In fact, job turnover is perhaps one of the most vexing workforce problems with companies employing communications-based workers. My customers tell me turnover rates range between 20 to 30% annually. Now imagine cutting that in half. If you have a workforce of 500 with a 20% turnover, that’s 100 new employees you have to recruit, hire and train. That’s easily half a million dollars.

In summary, the message is simple: Not only is it good to be green, but you can save a lot of money in the process. You can save on the care, feeding and housing of equipment. You can save on workforce consumption of office real estate. You can save on utilities. Workers can save time and money by avoiding commutes. And you can do a better job in the area of employee retention. That all adds up to a strong argument for adopting the CaaS model at your company.

This blog entry was posted by Ed Margulies, Senior Director, Product Management CRM Service Products at Oracle. Margulies is a telecommunications architect, usability expert, inventor, and the author of 17 books on telecommunications, contact centers and service automation. The views expressed in this blog are Margulies’ and do not necessarily reflect the views of Oracle.

A Common Thread

As a product manager in Oracle’s CRM Service Products team, I get to work with many companies worldwide that are honing the definition of CaaS and are continually innovating in this area. I view CaaS as a natural evolution of traditional hosted services. CaaS has its roots in enhanced network services reaching back into the 1970s and 80s. The differences between the two are not as stark as you may think, and there are also some similarities.

The common thread between CaaS and traditional hosted services is the idea of software as a shared resource. At the bottom are algorithms, codecs, and device drivers. In the middle are databases, APIs and resource management. At the top are applications. What is truly exciting is we are evolving from closed, proprietary networks into a world of open, API-hook-able networks.

An Enduring Model

You can get a hosted services provider to dedicate a “pod” of gear and software for you. This type of outsourced service amounts to labor arbitrage and the care and feeding of servers. But the true economy of scale kicks-in when this is done in a multi-tenant arrangement – so customers who heretofore were not able to contemplate the use of that software – for want of capital or know-how – are suddenly empowered. And that empowerment is enabled by the sharing of infrastructure thus making it more affordable. That’s what makes hosting, in general, such an enduring and credible model. That is the “hope” that even a small or medium sized company can take advantage of technology reserved for large corporations.

This hosted, shared software model cleared the way for many services. Among them are the oft-touted EDS on line “mainframe sharing” services offered by Ross Perot. Also consider payment processing and credit card clearing houses like National Data Corporation – or the pioneering efforts of First Data Resources in providing outsourced back-end Pay-Per-View statements for cable companies.

The Differences

So what’s the difference between these traditional hosted services and CaaS? Well, most of these older hosted efforts were nonetheless outsourced back-end services – not strictly communications-based. In fact most of them were machines talking to machines. When you bring these services into the realm of communications, four additional disciplines are at play: 1) Media manipulation and routing, 2) Presence Management, 3) Ubiquitous device management, and 4) Remote user registry management.

Back to the Future

One of my favorite examples of how these “new” disciplines were explored hails from a project called MICE (Modular Integrated Communications Environment). It had its roots at AT&T and was finally developed as a proof-of-concept at Bell Communications Research (now Telcordia) in the early eighties. I was involved as an OEM supplier of voice processing subsystems built by Voicetek. Other suppliers were Digital Equipment Corp (DECtalk text-to-speech), Redcom (Outboard state controlled switch) and some other speech processing elements. The MICE system was essentially a personal assistant / follow me / multi-channel hosted communications platform. What did it do? It read your email for you and delivered it to you via Text-To-Speech over the phone. It provided presence information to other users. It allowed callers to “find” you by using a registry and mapping service to different communications devices. It allowed you to change locations and create what we now call a “virtual office.” It rocked. But the Regional Bell Operating companies didn’t bite. Sadly, it was ahead of its time.

Ten years later, in the mid nineties, companies like Wildfire (now part of Virtuosity) took that basic concept a step further by contemplating more sophisticated speech recognition technology and launching a commercial service. And that service was touted as a computerized personal assistant that you could talk to make appointments, calls, look up contacts, etc. I recall the excitement in the air as Bill Warner and Richard Miner, the creators of the application; did “live without a net” demos of Wildfire at popular telecom shows of the day.

The Perfect Marriage

But now with Web 2.0 and beyond, we are moving these capabilities – grounded in the temporal domain – into a converged temporal and spatial domain. A richer set of media is now common, and communications “cockpits” and edge applications give users more intuitive control. Now, CaaS transcends a variety of user bases in personal productivity, social apps and even the contact center. Take, for example Oracle’s CRM On Demand. Here, remote users can control sophisticated CRM transactions – including interwoven voice and email – all within one interface.

In summary, the similarities between CaaS and traditional hosted services are about a sense of shared software resources. And the big difference is how CaaS addresses the human element more than traditional hosting services. With CaaS we add more people and real-time urgency to the mix. So CaaS is more about collaboration and people reaching out to other people aided by machines - not just about machines talking to machines. The ratio of people to machines is much higher in new CaaS applications than ever before. I hope it never goes back the other way.