What is CTI?

As the term computer telephony integration implies, at its most basic level, CTI is the integration of computing and telephony systems. In the overwhelming majority of implementations, computer systems and telephone systems are discrete units which must be interfaced and this requires the use of a common protocol. In addition to the six standard and defacto standard protocols, there are several vendor-specific proprietary protocols which enjoy varying levels of support.

However, integration of the computing and telephony systems is simply that - the integration of two boxes. To be of any use to the organisation that has paid for it, CTI requires the integration of the computing and telephony applications. This is not out of the box and until we have out-of-the-box businesses, we will not have out-of-the-box CTI applications. Vendors who pretend otherwise are best shown the door.

There are a number of CTI applications, the best known of which is screen population or screen pop, although one must differentiate between ersatz screen pop, the popping of a little window with the CLI of the caller which costs a lot and delivers little, from real screen pop with pops an application screen and populates it with information specific to the caller typically as keyed into an IVR application which costs more but delivers much more. There are, however many other applications including screen transfer with call transfer, screen/keyboard dialling, call routing, semi-automatic collection of line-of-business codes and recovery of dropped calls.

However, as with most fields of IT, there is much confusion and misinformation surrounding CTI, and much of this concerns claiming this or that technology to be CTI when it is, in fact, to be nothing of the sort. IVR systems are simply that, IVR system, which perform applications such as audiotext, auto-attendant, fax back and IVR applications, but they are not CTI products, and neither are the application generator software and circuit cards within them. Similarly, voice mail systems, with or without unified messaging capability, are not CTI products. And ACD MIS software is certainly not a CTI product. I wonder when the first claim will be made that because PABXs and computer systems must be connected by wiring that data cables are CTI products! Vendors that make spurious claims about their products are also best shown the door.

What CTI is, what it is not and the misinformation prevalent in the industry are just a few of the topics covered in the following four region-specific CTI reports.


CTI Reports
Computer Telephony Integration: from the Internet to the Desktop, specific to Australia and New Zealand, published March 2003 by Occidental Communications.
Computer Telephony Integration: from the Internet to the Desktop, in Europe, published October 2003 by Bloor Research.
Computer Telephony Integration: from the Internet to the Desktop, in North America, published December 2003 by Bloor Research.
Computer Telephony Integration: from the Internet to the Desktop specific to the Asian market, published October 2003 by Datamonitor.
Computer Telephony Integration Marktübersicht (Computer Telephony Integration: in the German-speaking market), in German published February 2004 by Oxygon Verlag GmbH.



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