CosmoCom's CosmoCall Universe, an all-IP call center platform, will be the core platform for the Telcordia Next Generation Contact Center (NGCC) Solution, an IP-based, end-to-end customer service system, the companies said. Telcordia Technologies will act as a systems integrator to put the tools together.

CosmoCall Universe connects businesses and their customers worldwide in multimedia sessions via the Internet and the telephone, and also manages email and voice messages, all in a single, unified platform. CosmoCall Universe's all-IP architecture is designed for high capacity, high availability operation and global distribution.

Voice over IP is considered an up-and-coming technology for at least one important sector of the contact center business - remote agents and distributed call centers. That's because IP lets you combine the voice and data link back to the headquarters infrastructure through a single connection and VoIP packet switching technology. Call center managers can provide remote agents with the functionality of the corporation's digital phones without the requirement for any hardware besides a PC. In some implementations, you don't even need to have a physical phone to make it work (though this would probably be foolhardy).

The Next Generation Contact Center Solution provides integrated customer support services, handling customer interactions via the Web, email and telephone through wireline and wireless, PSTN, IP and converged networks. Modeled on a unified, IP-based architecture, the combo offering provides multi-channel and multimedia features.

The Next Generation Contact Center's capabilities allow service providers to offer competitive differentiating, value-added, hosted contact center services to their business customers. The solution can also interoperate with existing legacy contact center systems.

CosmoCom considers their IP CosmoCall Universe to be a carrier-class offering, aiming it at high end service providers and large scale corporate users. By one estimate, their installed base represents a 50% market share of the US IP-ACD business.

For their part, Telcordia Technologies is one of the world's largest providers of operations support systems, network software and consulting and engineering services to the telecommunications industry.