There's a quiet revolution underway as the old 4 kHz narrowband phone system is being
disrupted by a combination of cell phones and Internet phones with advanced features and HD
Voice. Market research from 2010 suggests that approximately one third of installed phone lines
in the United States were using VoIP while two thirds still used the legacy PSTN. These numbers
are expected to flip over the next 5 years so that by 2015 a majority of all fixed phone lines in
the US will use VoIP.
With hundreds of proprietary digital phones and PBX systems, Windows TAPI (Telephone
Application Programming Interface) has traditionally dominated CTI by providing a common API
that phone and PBX vendors could write to. In response, European standards organizations
developed CSTA (Computer-Supported Telecommunications Applications) as a model for
standardizing the computer interface to PBX systems. CSTA has also been extended to SIP
phones in the form of uaCSTA (User Agent CSTA), but US adoption has been slow. Another
response to the complexity of proprietary phone systems is the emergence of Asterisk, a
powerful, free, open source PBX that works with phones from several major manufacturers. No
other PBX works with as wide a selection of phones, and this has driven the adoption of SIP
based VoIP as the industry standard.
By the 1990s, the PC was king. More software leading to ever more investment made it very
difficult for any platform that wasn't a PC to compete on features and price. As the global
Internet emerged, there was leverage in making the phone just another application that ran on
the PC. Multiple soft-phones and audio/video communication platforms were born by solving the
problem of streaming high quality audio/video across the Internet to PCs (like Skype, iChat AV,
and Magic Jack). Telepresence was marketed as a way to reduce the cost of business travel.
Some 10 years later, Apple transformed the cell phone industry by making the phone just
another app that ran on a powerful mobile computer with a breakthrough user interface.
The Internet with its open standards and vastly superior content has loosened the grip of the PC.
One effect has been the shift toward cloud computing. Telephone answering machines and PBX
have become applications that run on the server. It is no longer necessary for small business
owners to deal with the complexity and expense of managing their own phone system.
Companies like Phone.com and OnSip.com have emerged to provide business PBX phone service
via the Internet for a low monthly fee.
While the iPhone is setting the standard for mobile, there's still a need for simple, reliable, and
cost effective home and office phones. Standard SIP based VoIP phones have emerged to fill this
need. While soft-phones are popular for some applications (especially mobile), PCs are bulky,
power hungry, and more complex to manage compared to dedicated (modular) phones.
Phone Amego is positioned to serve this market as follows:
1. Despite all the changes in telephone technology, people still need to make and
receive phone calls while juggling information from multiple sources.
2. Many people will use more than one kind of phone during an extended transition
period (i.e. cell phone, SIP phone, Skype, landline, etc). Modular (RJ-11) telephone jacks are
being replaced by SIP and HTTP over Ethernet. Standard Definition narrowband voice is going the
way of dial-up networking.
3. Phone Amego allows you to leverage the power of CTI with the simplicity of
modular phones (including cell phones and soft-phones). Ironically, many soft-phones are
weak at supporting CTI under the assumption that CTI is the job of the call manager or PBX, but
the trend is going the other way. Many small businesses no longer need or want their own PBX,
but they still want CTI.
Phone Amego's integration with web based services, SIP phones, soft-phones, iPhone, iOS,
landlines, and support for native CRM offers ground breaking integration that wasn't possible
only a few years ago. As more businesses adopt iOS and consider using Macs, Phone Amego is
positioned to become popular with SOHO users. See
Choosing a SIP Phone for Mac CTI
Choosing a VoIP Service Provider for Mac CTI
US Telecom Industry from 2010 to 2015
The End of the Public Phone Network - IEEE Spectrum
The Mac-to-Phone Integration Challenge
Q: What about CTI in the cloud?
A: The same factors that are pushing PBX service to the cloud have inspired some companies to
offer CTI in the cloud. Invox.com for example offers PBX+ which includes CTI features. As the
developer of Phone Amego, I was intrigued to see the "Call Widget" which allows you to see
who's calling, transfer calls between employees, leave notes for calls, and integrate with web
based CRM systems like SalesForce starting at $99 per month (bundled with 3000 minutes or
higher).
Phone Amego combined with Phone.com or VoIP.ms offers similar capability but with two key
advantages:
(1) Consumer friendly pricing. Phone Amego is $30/seat (one time) or $60 for up to 5 users
within a single family household. Phone.com is competitive with Vonage.
(2) Phone Amego works with native applications Mac users are already familiar with including
Apple's Address Book, iCal, and Mail (which integrate easily with iPhone and iPad). The biggest
cost of moving to a CRM is time spent learning a new system and entering your data. Native
apps lower the barrier to entry.
The market is still deciding where software-as-a-service makes the most sense. Google is
pushing an Apps in the cloud model (Google Apps), whereas Apple is pushing a native Apps with
data in the cloud model (iCloud).
I can't claim there's one right answer for everyone, but I'm partial to the native Apps approach.
Native apps offer a richer experience and deeper integration as illustrated by the examples
below:
(1) Phone Amego's click-to-dial feature isn't limited to your on-line address book. You can click-
to-dial almost any number that appears on your screen and can also send touch-tones to access
other services.
(2) Outgoing call setup is faster because you can dial directly from your phone instead of ringing
your phone first, and then ringing the remote party.
(3) Phone Amego's caller ID isn't limited to reverse lookup or opening a CRM page. It integrates
with native apps including iCal and Daylite. Other options include speak caller ID, growl
notification, multi-line Caller ID, and native scripting (to pause iTunes for example).
The PBX user experience has always been distributed between the users phone and PBX
equipment in a wiring closet. Moving the PBX equipment out of the closet and into the cloud
offers greater flexibility to enhance the user experience.
In contrast, moving CTI to the cloud limits integration beyond the web browser and thus
flexibility to leverage local software and devices.
The original Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution focussed on managing and
recording interaction with customers and any communication that occurred. As CRM systems
kept piling on features and complexity, high cost and low usability was often the result. Phone
Amego takes a back to basics approach by providing a built-in lightweight CRM that integrates
with more powerful tools as needed.
For another perspective, see Shell Apps and Silver Bullets.