The common denominator: These kinds of applications require large displays. Although smaller than a standard LCD monitor or laptop, the screens on today's high-end phones, at about 3 inches by 4.5 inches, enjoy a better resolution than ever before—with color. Until recently, the best of the phones from Avaya and Siemens used 320x240 pixels, but Siemens' newest model, the OpenStage 80, includes a 640x480-pixel VGA monitor along with a screensaver. It can even associate pictures with callers. Polycom doesn't offer a color phone, but has one in the works.
Application Transformation
While screen size and color are nice, the heart of the functionality equation lies in how well any device delivers applications.
LifeNet is the largest nonprofit, full-service organ-donation agency and tissue banking system in the United States. For its staff, reliable phone communication is a life-or-death proposition, says Kevin McPhee, LifeNet's manager of telecommunications. Coordination among the donor's family, the hospital, recovery technicians and the potential recipient to recover the organ and deliver it in time must be managed without skipping a beat. LifeNet uses Avaya's 9600 Series One-X phones to quickly add callers to contact lists for speed dial directly from call logs. When the next call is received on that number, pertinent information about the caller pops up to aid communications.
For reliable operation in industries like hospitality and medical care, high-end phones must communicate with application servers using standards-based protocols like HTTP and WAP (Wireless Application Protocol), as well as markup languages like HTML, WML and XML, giving IT more control over the phone and easing application integration for faster deployments.
In other words, if your organization is going to put high-end phones in all of your guest suites or waiting rooms, then IT either needs to do the integration work, or shell out for a product like Citrix Application Gateway to do it for them. Avaya, Cisco Systems and Nortel Networks all use this integration platform to deliver and transform packaged applications to their phones' screens and speakers with minimal effort on the development side (see the features chart in the image gallery). Citrix Application Gateway also streamlines integration of custom Web applications. Organizations could choose to do the integration themselves, but that will entrench them in a product development lifecycle.
Cell-phone vendors have long offered lightweight WML browsers designed to display Web content on small screens, for use with their Internet-capable handsets, but today's larger screens and faster cellular data services have made HTML more prevalent on smartphones. The four high-end phones we looked at provide HTML interfaces that Web designers can use to create applications for the desktop VoIP phone, giving flexibility as well as integration in application development.
Bob Friday, Chief AI Officer for Juniper Networks, explains how the advanced technology is transforming operations.
Contact center leaders from 8x8, Awaken Intelligence, and 360insight discuss the importance of agent experience.
AI may force enterprises to rewire parts of their data centers so they are fully optimized to run such workloads. The question is do you use Ethernet or InfiniBand?
