CTI technology is on a roll

Voice and data convergence is becoming a reality.

The much-heralded convergence of voice and data communications is about to become reality, writes John Geralds.

CTI enables computer equipment such as PCs and servers to work with telephony applications.

In the last three years, network vendors such as Cisco, Lucent, Siemens, Alcatel and Ericsson have spent more than $50 billion (#31.3 billion) buying up other companies to give themselves both voice and data-based products.

Intel, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft and Canadian telecoms giant Nortel Networks announced an alliance last month to produce multimedia telephony equipment.

Microsoft's Windows 2000 operating system, expected to ship next year, will enable smoother transfer of voice and video over data networks, while Novell is tailoring its directory software to help carriers operate large, unified networks.

The main market for such technology is government and big business, where it is seen as as a way to cut costs and boost services. But the technical obstacles to converging voice, data and video remain considerable.

A report by analyst Dataquest predicts that the computer telephony integration (CTI) equipment is likely to grow into a $6.1 billion industry by 2000.

Dataquest had previously predicted that the CTI equipment market would top $8 billion as early as 1999.

Forecasts for sales of equipment are lower because the largest expense in CTI projects has proven to be integration.

CTI vendors introduced a variety of new products and initiatives earlier this month at the Computer Telephony Expo in California designed to ease integration.

Microsoft announced plans to integrate Dialogic's CT Media telephony software into Windows. Telephony equipment maker Opentelecom launched an open source initiative in which members will agree to share source code.

Backers for the scheme, including Natural MicroSystems, Lucent and Telgen, are all offering their source code for free.

Brough Turner, senior vice president and chief technology officer at Natural MicroSystems, said that the initiative is focused on peripheral component interconnect (PCI) and Compact PCI hardware platforms for computer telephony peripherals, because low-level software infrastructure 'is missing'.