KPN INTRODUCES ON-DEMAND CONTACT CENTER IN BENELUX
BASED ON COSMOCOM PLATFORM

Earlier this week, CosmoCom announced that KPN had selected the CosmoCall Universe platform to enable their new Contact Center Online service. The CosmoCom announcement was on the heels of KPN's own announcement in the Netherlands.

The new service leverages KPN's vast experience in the contact center space and enables organizations to implement a comprehensive customer contact center that can be staffed by premise-based agents as well as virtual and home-based agents. KPN's Newtel Essence division, the call center market leader in its region, will sell and implement Contact Center Online.

Through its new service, KPN will provide customers with professional, unified multi-channel customer contact for both inbound and outbound applications. CosmoCom and KPN Newtel Essence expect rapid growth in customer contact activities in the Netherlands during the next few years, and rapid uptake of the new service to meet this growing demand.

According to Marcel Otto, Managing Director of KPN Newtel Essence, "Successful organizations need access to the best available communication technology, and that's what Contact Center Online provides. CosmoCom's technology enabled us to create what we are confident will be a winning offering: an affordable service with significant capabilities, flexible deployment options, and usage-based pricing with little or no up-front investment."

Read the CosmoCom release for more information and if you read Dutch take a look at KPN's announcement as well as some of the press pickups in the Recent Ink section of this newsletter.

CCU AND CONSOLIDATION 2.0 ARE HOT AT CALL CENTER EVENT IN SPAIN

The IFAES Call Center and CRM Solutions show recently took place in Spain on November 7 and 8 at the Feria de Madrid hotel. The annual show is one of the most important events for executives in the region to learn about the latest  CRM and contact center technology, and CosmoCom was well represented on multiple fronts.

Two of CosmoCom's partners in the region, Telefonica Empresas and IPSA, sponsored the event and showcased their CosmoCom-based offerings. Local CosmoCom staff was there to support them. The Consolidation 2.0 message resonated well with attendees, judging from feedback from the many who visited the booths and sessions.

Telefonica Empresas featured their CCOD offering "CC-DIDO" which is based on CosmoCall Universe. It was at the IFAES show two years earlier that they announced the product, which has continued to gain popularity. Telefonica's Jorge Astray was, as usual, a super presenter, keeping the crowds both entertained and informed.

In a nearby booth, IPSA was fully committed to educating potential customers about the benefits of Consolidation 2.0 as enabled by CosmoCom technology. They did a wonderful job of creating interest around this important subject, both in their booth and in general sessions. CosmoCom's Remy Marceron further explained Consolidation 2.0 in his own presentation, which he delivered in Spanish.

NEW EPLDT CASE STUDY AVAILABLE

ePLDT, a subsidiary of PLDT, the largest Philippine Telco, has been a very active service provider partner in the region for quite some time now. They have done a remarkable job of proving the value of Contact Center On-Demand and building a large and growing customer base. CosmoCall Universe is the foundation for Contact Center Plus, the first Contact Center On-Demand business in the Philippines.

You can now access a compelling case study, available the CosmoCom website, that shows how ePLDT combined its call center outsourcing and BPO experience, extensive IT Infrastructure, and carrier services, to create their highly successful CCOD business serving the Asian and U.S. markets.

Access the ePLDT case study and others on our Case Studies page.
 

IN THE FAST LANE

CosmoCom France Takes to the Race Track

The CosmoCom team in France are no strangers to the fast lane. In fact, they are experts at racing around to uncover and develop new relationships while keeping our existing partners and customers in the SEMENA region happy and productive as evidenced by the IFAES story above.

This year, they're literally taking CosmoCom into the fast lane with the sponsorship of a couple of race cars in the Magny-Cours (home of  the legendary French Grand Prix Formula 1) endurance races that took place on October 27 - 28.

CosmoCom showed its colors in the 4,000 km competition, which took place from noon to midnight on the 27th, with our logo prominently adorning Norma 86 and her driver Jean Pierre Mothe. CosmoCom also sponsored a second car, yellow vétue, no 15. 

The weather was great and more than 80 VIPs, hosted by CosmoCom's Iraj Rezaian and his team, came out to enjoy the races, talk to the drivers, and pose for photos in a formula prototype with Jean Pierre. Some brave guests even got the thrilling chance to take a turn around the track in Norma between races.

You can find more about the race including links to numerous photographs at  http://www.bluelightcn.typepad.com/cosmocomcar/

COSMOCOM GOLD SPONSOR OF CALL CENTER 2.0 IN JAN

For many, Miami Beach, Florida is a prime winter destination. There is so much to see and do, but there is one more reason to consider visiting, especially during January 23-25. CosmoCom is a Gold Sponsor at TMC's Call Center 2.0 show at the Miami Beach Convention Center, a show within a show that is co-located with Internet Telephony Conference and Expo East. You won't want to miss the chance to meet with us in person at booth CC523 or hear us on the "Unified Communications in the Contact Center" panel.

In next month's CosmoChronicle, we'll share more details, including a link for a complementary VIP exhibit pass. Stay tuned.

INTELLECA WINS SOUTH AFRICA AWARDS FOR CCOD OFFERING

Intelleca, South Africa's fastest growing call centre solution provider and CosmoCom partner, has won the National Technical Innovation of the Year at the National BPO Awards, held in Durban. This follows Intelleca's winning the Gauteng Technical Innovation of the Year Award for its contact centre on demand service based on CosmoCom technology. This award earned the company automatic qualification for the national awards.

"We won the award for the successful development and repeatable deployment of our contact centre on demand (CCoD) managed service, which we purpose-built for the South African contact centre market," says Grant Allan, business manager of Intelleca's Managed Services division. "We entered into one of the most fiercely competitive award categories, that of Technical Innovation. The award underlines the value of the investment we and our clients have made in CCoD, and proves that innovating to build services and solutions for the local market is a sound strategy. Bringing this new service into a very mature market, and winning the award at a national level is a tremendous achievement."

Congratulations Intelleca!

Read the full story on Intelleca's National  and Gauteng Technical Innovation of the Year Awards.

VIEW THE CONSOLIDATION 2.0" WEB CAST RECORDINGS

In case you missed last month's announcement here is a reminder that CosmoCom hosted a pair of web casts, in conjunction with TMC, this fall on the next generation of call center consolidation, also known as Call Center Consolidation 2.0.

The first in the series, "Call Center Consolidation 2.0: What the Next Wave in Customer Care Means for You, outlined the concepts and principles. Part two in the series, "Call Center Consolidation 2.0 in Practice: How enterprises are implementing and benefiting from Consolidation 2.0," explored examples of companies that have successfully implemented the strategy,  showing how they built their solutions, the problems they solved and the benefits they realized.

Whether or not you attended the live web casts, you can still view recordings of both by following the links below.

• Call Center Consolidation 2.0 (Sept 25)
• Call Center Consolidation 2.0 In Practice (Oct 25)

 BITS & PIECES: SOME VOIP FACTOIDS

French VoIP revolution
According to FierceVoIP, anyone doubting the triple play revolution transforming global telecoms should look to France. Dutch-based Telecompaper reports VoIP line usage in France leaped 77.5 percent over the last year to reach nearly 22 percent of fixed-phone lines or 8.7 million lines in the second quarter of 2007, according to figures from the national regulator, Arcep.

VoIP call volumes also surged to account for 30.3 percent of overall telephony in the second quarter, up from 17.1 percent in the second quarter of last year. Incumbent France Telecom is leading the charge for change with its successful re-branding to Orange for its mobile, internet and television offerings.

The growth in VoIP is being driven by the French love of broadband and the related success of broadband-based triple-play services. Telecompaper reports the number of traditional phone lines fell by 7.3 percent in one year to 38.9 million at June 30 with a staggering 87.6 percent of the country's 16.1 million internet accesses now using broadband. Nearly 3 million new broadband customers came on board over the year.

WHO'S TALKING? RECENT INK

Two Minutes with Ari Sonesh
Each month Long Island Business News (LIBN) reporter Alison Snyder interviews executives at leading Long Island companies for her "Two Minutes with..." column. Last month she had the opportunity to catch up with CosmoCom CEO and founder, Ari Sonesh to get his views on how CosmoCom got where it is and what the future may hold. Read what they both have to say.

KPN and CosmoCom Making News in the Netherlands
Our lead story this month is about KPN launching CCOD services in the Benelux region based on CosmoCall Universe. The news has been making headlines in the region and if you read Dutch below are just a couple of  examples:

• KPN, CosmoCom introduceren online contact center diensten appeared in TelecomPaper on Nov. 28.
• KPN en CosmoCom in contact centers appeared in TeleCom Update on Nov. 28.

NEW MEMBERS OF THE COSMOCOM FAMILY

CosmoCom Americas

Sergey Manukhin joins CosmoCom as a Systems Engineer at HQ. He brings with him more than ten years of experience in administration and systems engineering. Prior to joining CosmoCom Sergey worked as Sr. Systems Engineer in FinaTek LLC. where among other things he worked with ASTERISK VoIP PBX and vTIGER CRM.

Naresh Gupta has joined the HQ development team as our newest VCS Developer. He has more that nine years of experience in software engineering and development in the communications and networking space having worked at Catapult, Comverse and Nortel. He holds a Masters degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.

Uddhav Shirname is our most recent  Sr. Software Developer at HQ. He has over eight  years of experience in design and development of distributed multithreaded architectures and extensive knowledge of SIP and related technologies. He has held senior technical development positions at such companies at Covad, Dynamicsoft, Persistent Systems and I2 Technologies. He holds B.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering from Pune University in India.

CosmoCom Israel

Adi Turnheim, has joined the Israel R&D group as part of the database and applications development team. She has 5+ years of experience in DB/.NET/C# development. Prior to CosmoCom, Adi was in the IDF (intelligence core), where she served in several development roles in mission critical systems. Adi holds a B.Sc. in Computer Engineering from the Technion in Israel.

TRADESHOW NEWS: COMING ATTRACTIONS

	Call Center 2.0/IT Expo East January 23 - 25, 2008  Miami Beach Convention Center Miami, FL, USA www.tmcnet.com/voip/conference/call-center/  CosmoCom is a Gold Sponsor of Call Center 2.0 See us in Booth CC 523
	Call Center World - 2008 February 18 -21 2008 Estrel Convention Center Berlin, Germany Booth Hall 1: 1A16    www.callcenterworld.de
	VoiceCon Spring 2008 March 17 - 20, 2008 Gaylord Palms Hotel Orlando, FL, USA http://www.voicecon.com/orlando/ See us in Booth 1300
	RECORDED WEBINARS
	View recordings of our Webinar events including "Consolidation 2.0", "Hosted Contact Center for Outsourcers", "Contact Center On-Demand" and "Telecom Customer Care"

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	TECH SUPPORT UPDATES
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