RadiSys Targets Contact Center Market with Market-Leading IP Media Server Platform

RadiSys® Corporation (NASDAQ:RSYS), the leading global provider of advanced embedded solutions, today announced that its Convedia ®Media Servers are increasingly deployed in IP contact center solutions. The product family’s real-time audio, video, and new embedded fax media processing capabilities provide a common, feature-rich platform that fulfills next-generation contact center business requirements. The broad, flexible capabilities of the Convedia media server proved to be pivotal in closing new business in the Europe-Middle East-Africa (EMEA) region with an innovative IP contact center service provider, a leading IP contact center solutions vendor, and a systems integrator that developed a custom IP contact center for a government’s tax agency.

Commenting on the RadiSys announcement, Matthias Machowinski, Infonetics Directing Analyst for Enterprise Voice & Data said, "RadiSys’ IP media servers process a wide variety of media, and they have a long history of deployments with carriers worldwide. This lends itself nicely to today’s IP contact centers which integrate voice, fax, email, web, and video. By having a dedicated media processing resource, operators can not only streamline their IP contact center architectures, but also create new media-processing intensive applications quickly and cost effectively."

RadiSys Ongoing R&D Investments Optimize Convedia Media Servers to Meet IP Contact Center Requirements

In 2008 alone, RadiSys has added support for text-to-speech (TTS), automatic speech recognition (ASR), continuous presence (CP) video conferencing, and the industry’s first fully fault-tolerant capability with its N+1 media processing card redundancy feature. The most recent addition, embedded fax processing, enables Convedia media servers to receive and store G.711 or T.38 fax messages as well as send fax messages from data storage. More features specific to the IP Contact Center industry are planned within the next year.

"Since pioneering the IP media server market, our goal has always been to deliver robust media processing features on a common IP platform so that our partners may rapidly introduce their new and innovative services while reducing service delivery costs,” stated David Smith, General Manager of the Media Server Business Unit at RadiSys. "Building on our IP media processing leadership with ongoing R&D investments in speech, video, and now embedded IP fax processing features has positioned our product well for IP contact center vendors and hosted contact center service providers. Our plan is to leverage our early commercial success within the contact center market, and grow this segment into a sizable contribution to our overall business,” Smith said.

The Business Case for Call Center Adoption of a Common IP Platform

Traditional call center environments are characterized by disparate, function-specific voice processing systems for Automatic Call Distribution (ACD), Interactive Voice Response (IVR), and customer-agent-supervisor conference mixing and recording equipment. Integration between these voice systems, as well as traditional Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) between voice systems and data networks is typically a complex undertaking which not only limits features and capabilities, but also creates a complex and expensive environment to develop, integrate, and maintain.

By comparison, next-generation IP contact centers are driving innovation with improved economics by embracing the ongoing migration to VoIP technology, open computing systems, and decomposed architectures. The various agent conferencing, ACD, IVR, fax, and recording systems are separated into application logic and the underlying voice, video, and fax real-time packet processing. These multiple applications are now simplified and integrated, because they can all share and control a common IP media server platform using open, standards-based interfaces such as Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), and XML-based scripting languages.

Robust Convedia Media Server Platform Benefits IP Contact Center Ecosystem

The broad feature-rich capabilities and flexibility of the Convedia media server product family benefits the entire IP contact center ecosystem.

• For IP contact center applications developers, partnering with RadiSys and specifying Convedia media servers with their applications focuses resources exclusively on application development, instead of on specialized engineering efforts associated with real-time voice, video, and fax packet processing across IP networks. The end result is a shortened application development timeline which, in turn, speeds time to market.
• For IP contact center systems integrators and solutions vendors, the adoption of open, standards-based SIP and XML-based scripting languages simplifies integration efforts and lowers development and deployment costs. Consolidating all media processing into a single platform improves overall asset utilization and reduces costs making vendors’ solutions price competitive.
• For IP contact center operators and customers, processing fax along with voice and video media eliminates the need to purchase and maintain disparate voice, video, and fax processing equipment. This slashes capital expenditures and decreases network maintenance costs.
• For IP contact center agents, the availability of IP-based multimedia processing translates to enhanced interaction with customers through such capabilities as supervisor "whisper” connections for those agents who need real-time coaching, recording conversations, seamless transfer of customers from one agent to another, and instant conferencing between agents and other product experts to deliver prompt and accurate answers, thereby earning and building customer loyalty.

Additional Information Resources

Convedia IP Contact Center Solutions Page

Convedia Media Servers Data Sheets

IP Media Servers for Next Generation Contact Centers White Paper

About RadiSys Convedia Media Servers

Ranked the market leading IP media server vendor for four consecutive years by market research firms Infonetics and iLocus, RadiSys Convedia media servers support a broad set of IP media processing features essential for next-generation IP Contact Center applications. The RadiSys Convedia CMS-9000 Media Server delivers optimal performance and reliability, scalability, and a low total cost of ownership for media-intensive IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) networks and services. These media servers enable fixed mobile convergence by delivering a shared IP media processing resource for any access network, including wireless, broadband, cable, PSTN or satellite. The system’s multi-service versatility enables revenue-generating IMS applications, including multimedia conferencing, IP Centrex, ringback tones, network gaming, video communications, and complex audio/video transcoding.

About RadiSys Corporation

RadiSys (NASDAQ: RSYS) is a leading provider of advanced solutions for the communications networking and commercial systems markets. Through intimate customer collaboration and combining innovative technologies and industry leading architecture, RadiSys helps OEMs, systems integrators, and solution providers bring better products to market faster and more economically. RadiSys products include embedded boards, application enabling platforms, the OS-9® operating system, and turn-key systems, which are used in today's complex computing, processing, and network-intensive applications. For more information, visit http://www.radisys.com, e-mail info@radisys.com, or call 800-950-0044 or 503-615-1100. Editors seeking more information may contact Lyn Pangares at RadiSys Corporation at 503-615-1220 or lyn.pangares@radisys.com.

RadiSys and Convedia are registered trademarks of RadiSys Corporation.

All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Note to Editors:

This announcement is being released simultaneously in Shanghai, China, to coincide with the opening of the China IP Communications Conference (September 17-19) during which Charles Wong, RadiSys General Manager for Asia Pacific, will deliver a speech addressing "IP Media Servers for Next-Generation Contact Centers” on September 19, 2008.