Last week I had the chance to chat with Siemens about their new OpenScape Contact Center solution that's being announced today. While the individual piece part components for this solution are available to anyone ready to put them together today, this new packaging bundles the Siemens OpenScape UC Server and OpenScape Contact Center into two new bundles and portal offering that provide easy integration into the enterprise. The bundles are available June 30th.

The target business for this solution ranges from mid-sized to very large call centers. Very large, in this case, means the Siemens solution can support up to 7500 agents in a single contact center. That's larger than any that I know of. The largest in operation at companies like American Express, may range up to 4-5,000 agents

During our conversation, we took some time to really work through some of the highlights, and I thought I'd share my impressions here. The bundles are interesting, but they really are packaging of existing solutions that people can put together themselves to create the same functionality.

One of the major drivers in releasing improved contact center solutions is to aid in resolving calls on first contact. First contact resolution is a key metric for any call center environment, and typically 25% or more of calls have to be escalated outside the contact center to other enterprise resources and personnel for resolution. To increase the odds of first call resolution, Siemens is working to streamline the process. They clearly recognize the value of speedy recognition of problems.

Siemens UC server is a software only solution that will run on many hardware platforms.

The visual above shows how everythings stacks together. in terms of the OpenScape Applications, with the new addition of the Contact Center in the yellow box on the far right. The other pieces already exist. I'ts really important to note the very top row of boxes - CEBP integration. Siemens really "gets it" when it comes to the importance of Communications Enhance Business Process (CEBP), and this detail shows just how committed they are to supporting the next generation of integration between network services and enterprise business applications.


In this visual, we get a sense of the packaging that enables the SIP-based Contact Center. There's also a softphone client, so hardware phones aren't required.

Not, in yellow, the presence and collaboration view. I think this is one of the most important pieces of this bundling and Siemens' approach. Agents can see each others' presence and status information. While this is simply leveraging earlioer call center supervisor functionality that began four years ago with their Agile product, it's a powerfula contact center tool.

Not only can the contact center agents see one another, they can be set up to see presence and status of resources throughout the entire enterprise. If 25% of calls require outreach to other parts of the business, this provides a powerful tool to increase the chances of first call problem resolution. And the presence view fully supports Jabber and Sametime, making it highly interoperable.



This visual simply providers a view of the bundling packages that will be available.



This last slide shows a couple of peeks at how things work. The top graphic is the existing desktop. On the right, we get a glimpse of the presence view. It's a common IM client look and feel, making ease of learning and use a minimal impact on work processes,

Collaboration happens today between the contact center and the rest of the enterprise, but it happens in a very non-structured form. Siemens OpenScape Contact Center solution brings structure, manageability and reporting capabilities to improve contact center efficiencies.

Here's the actual press release.
NOTE: Reposted on 4/22 as a revision to the press release. Pricing in the version I'd posted had changed.

Siemens Announces New OpenScape® Contact Center Solution for the OpenScape Unified Communications Server

Software-based offering provides Voice, UC and Contact Center capabilities in one integrated package

BOCA RATON, Fla. — April 21, 2008 — Siemens Communications, Inc. today introduced the OpenScape® Contact Center, a comprehensive voice, unified communications and customer interaction software solution designed to work with virtually any existing telephony environment. It is based on Siemens’ innovative new unified communications software foundation, OpenScape Unified Communications (UC) Server, which removes the artificial legacy barriers between today’s traditionally separate voice, video and unified communications systems to enable a comprehensive suite of UC applications.

The OpenScape Contact Center offering builds on the presence-enabled HiPath® ProCenter Enterprise contact center application to provide a platform to enhance customer interactions across multiple segments of an enterprise, on virtually any existing communication or network infrastructure. Coupled with the OpenScape Voice Application, this robust solution supports environments of up to 7,500 active agents and includes optional voice and contact center server redundancy with automated fail-over to help ensure availability of mission critical customer interaction systems.

Leveraging the OpenScape UC Server foundation, it can provide agents with an aggregated, unified desktop client view of all contact center personnel and enterprise users’ presence and availability. This enables agents to specifically address urgent, complex, or sensitive customer interactions requiring escalation beyond the contact center and drives up first contact resolution by tapping the knowledge and expertise across the enterprise in real-time.

The OpenScape Contact Center also addresses the traditional limitations of the hardware intensive site-based contact center by migrating to SIP and providing the new OpenScape UC Application, Personal Edition, soft phone and productivity desktop for each agent. This SIP-based contact center virtualization capability makes every agent a UC user, while enabling agents to work in any location equipped with just headsets and minimally configured desktops. This easy, software-based expansion of ‘on-demand’ agents offers enterprises dramatic opportunities to leverage their distributed resources across multiple sites, branch offices, remote or home-based locations with secure IP network access.

Also announced today, the new IP-based Voice Portal application complements the OpenScape UC Server and adds to Siemens’ already robust offering by delivering a comprehensive, natural speech enabled self-service solution. The open standards-based Voice Portal solution can help enhance the experience of customers calling in to a contact center by providing enhanced self-service options as well as more seamless integration with the contact center routing engine and virtual agents. It can help improve the opportunity to resolve issues on the first call while optimizing the use of agents and technology.

“The OpenScape Contact Center solution is further evidence of Siemens’ ongoing transformation into a software-oriented company and is an important piece of the OpenScape UC Server platform,” said Dana Rasmussen, President of Siemens Communications, Inc. “This solution rounds out Siemens’ suite of UC applications by delivering a comprehensive, robust offering that demonstrates the value of Open Communications in customer interactions.”

Computacenter, an IT service and solution provider that recently migrated its contact center service to the OpenScape Contact Center, saw the new solution as a means to help achieve their stated goals as a multi-national service provider. “We saw this as a way to increase our scalability, flexibility and resiliency. We are invigorating operations across multiple European and offshore locations using a highly scalable and more cost effective software deployment model. We are looking to expand our presence and collaboration capabilities into the virtualized enterprise,” said Gavin McLachlan, UK IS director at Computacenter.

Pricing and Availability
The OpenScape Contact Center packaged offering, which includes the OpenScape UC Server, OpenScape Voice, HiPath ProCenter Enterprise, and OpenScape UC Application, Personal Editions, will be generally available June 30, 2008. The package starts at $42,500 for 100 voice users, 10 agents and 1 manager. The new Voice Portal solution is currently available, with pricing based on customer configuration starting at $31,150 based a 48-port configuration.

About Siemens
Siemens AG (NYSE:SI) is one of the largest global electronics and engineering companies with reported worldwide sales of $107.4 billion in 2006. Founded 160 years ago, the company is a leader in the areas of Medical, Power, Automation and Control, Transportation, Information and Communications, Lighting, Building Technologies, Water Technologies and Services and Home Appliances. With its U.S. corporate headquarters in New York City, Siemens in the USA has sales of $21.4 billion and employs approximately 70,000 people throughout all 50 states and Puerto Rico. Eleven of Siemens' worldwide businesses are based in the United States. With its global headquarters in Munich, Siemens AG and its subsidiaries employ 480,000 people in 190 countries. For more information on Siemens in the United States: www.usa.siemens.com.

About Siemens Communications, Inc.
Siemens Communications, Inc. is an affiliate of Siemens Enterprise Communications GmbH & Co. KG, one of the world's leading suppliers of Unified Communications technologies. The company's unique Open Communications approach to providing software, solutions and services for enterprises of all sizes enables business processes to be more productive, faster and more secure - with any device, network or information technology infrastructure. Siemens Communications, Inc. and Siemens Enterprise Communications GmbH & Co. KG are wholly owned subsidiaries of Siemens AG, which has its global headquarters in Munich, Germany.

Note: Siemens, OpenScape and HiPath are registered trademarks of Siemens AG or its subsidiaries and affiliates. All other company, brand, product and service names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

This release contains forward-looking statements based on beliefs of Siemens management. The words "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "forecast," "expect," "intend," "plan," "should," and "project" are used to identify forward-looking statements. Such statements reflect the company's current views with respect to future events and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause the actual results to be materially different, including, among others, changes in general economic and business conditions, changes in currency exchange rates and interest rates, introduction of competing products, lack of acceptance of new products or services and changes in business strategy. Actual results may vary materially from those projected here. Siemens does not intend or assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.
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