CosmoCall Universe™ Contact Center Technology
    Architecture Overview

CosmoCall Universe is a universal access contact center platform designed for high capacity, high availability, and host-ability; and implemented on industry standard computing elements and Windows Server. The system is based on IP communication and open, standards-based interfaces. The software is written in C++ and is object-oriented. Inter-process communication enables a distributed architecture. Furthermore, Universe fully exploits the benefits of the Windows security model. 

The system architecture below provides an overview of CosmoCall Universe.

The system architecture illustrated above is color-coded to identify three domains: purple, for the CosmoCall Universe servers; yellow, for the IP network and IP-connected caller and agent clients; and green, for the telephone network and telephone-connected  callers and agent clients. On the left, we see the major types of caller clients. And on the right, we see the three optional configurations of the agent client.

Core Servers - A Universal Call Distributor

The Core Servers embody the same kind of ACD intelligence that traditionally resides within a proprietary telephone switch. The server is a full-featured, high capacity ACD, capable of managing thousands of agents, and of organizing calls into any number of queues. But in Universe, a "call" can be any type of contact request, a "queue" can contain any and all of these types, and an "agent" can receive and respond to any of them. Agents are organized into agent groups with customer-defined many-to-many relationships between queues and groups. In addition to these basic building blocks of queues and agent groups, the ACD supports skills-based routing and has an advanced priority feature that allows multiple priorities to exist within a single queue. The Universe ACD does everything traditional circuit-switched ACDs do and more, simply as an application server connected to the network.

Agent Servers - Flexibility and Scalability 

Agent Servers manage communication sessions with CosmoCall agents, providing virtually unlimited scalability, and complete flexibility for network architecture design. CosmoCall agents can be in any network domain. Communication between agents and the Agent Servers is encrypted for security.

Connection Servers - Flexibility and Scalability 

Connection Servers manage communication sessions with callers, and also provide virtually unlimited scalability through simple addition. Each type of connection server manages a different type of call using the standard external interfaces that match the call type it is designed to support. This CosmoCall Universe platform is highly extensible - a new type of communication session can be implemented simply by creating a new Connection Server with the appropriate external interfaces. 

Dialing Servers - Flexibility and Scalability 

Dialing Servers provide feature-rich outbound predictive dialing, including campaign management. This allows tenants to run outbound campaigns using the most sophisticated algorithms to dynamically control the dialing rate and immediately route the successful calls to available agents.

Agent Types 

CosmoCall Universe provides a solution for every environment by supporting three agent configurations. Selecting the agent configuration and changing it at any time is a simple one-click administrative selection.

PC Agent - Softphone

PC agents don't need telephones - they use their multimedia PCs, equipped with headsets, to answer telephone calls, web calls, voice messages, and e-mail messages. All switching is accomplished via the managed IP backbone. This single-appliance, single-connection solution is economical and provides the maximum in location-independence for the agent. 

PC Agent - IP Phone 

For users who prefer having a more traditional telephone-style appliance that is independent of the PC, the IP Phone agent is a good solution. Like PC agents, IP Phone agents work with a single IP connection. Their IP phones have separate IP addresses, and provide a communication path external to the PC.

Hybrid Agent 

In situations of integration with existing telephony environments, the Hybrid (Circuit Phone) agent may be the preferred solution. In this configuration, CosmoCall agent client software runs on the agent's PC, but the system delivers telephone calls to the agent's telephone. Telephone calls pass through the IP domain and may be routed through the VoIP Gateway that is nearest to the agent's phone. In this way the system minimizes the additional cost of using the telephone network to deliver calls to remote agents.

Phone Agent 

Agents are also supported in configurations without PC software. The PC is not required at all. The system will deliver calls to any telephone number. Telephone Agents log in and out of the system via IVR.

Call Scenarios

Internet Call Scenario

A PC caller browsing the Web clicks on an icon backed by CosmoCall Universe technology and enters a HTML session with an Internet Connection Server (ICS). The ICS sends a call request to the ACD server via the IP network and the ACD server manages the call request as described above, eventually selecting a CSR to receive the call. The CSR's PC is running Universe Agent software. The ACD server communicates with the ICS and the CSR to set up a connection via the ICS between the caller and the CSR. The ICS mediates for the HTML-based keyboard chat. For appropriately equipped callers, live voice and video communication is a direct IP-to-IP link between caller and CSR using H.323 or SIP. The Universe ICS, AIS and Agent maintain a heartbeat status communication with the ACD Server, which acts as a connection manager, and not as a bottleneck for the digital communication dataflow.

Telephone Call Scenario

The telephone caller uses an ordinary telephone. The call is converted to a VoIP session by a standard VoIP gateway, then answered by the VoIP Connection Server (VCS). This component provides the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) function for telephone callers. IVR applications are developed using standard scripting languages or with CosmoDesigner, a graphical application development tool. Like the ICS, the VCS sends a call request to the ACD Server. Telephone calls flow seamlessly through the same call center processes that serve Internet calls. This technology supports a very high quality of voice communication so callers do not notice any difference between a conversation with a CosmoCall CSR and a call to an ordinary telephone-based CSR. As the call is delivered to the CSR's desktop, a screen pop presents information collected during the IVR session.

Message Call Scenario

Universe also provides automatic distribution of messages, including e-mail, voice messages, and fax. Automatic Message Distribution is accomplished using the same ACD intelligence applied to live calls. All queues are universal queues that can route any type of call or message to a single pool of CSRs. The Universe Message Connection Server (MCS) exposes an SMTP interface to receive messages, and sends routing requests to the ACD server like those from any other connection server. When the ACD selects the CSR, the MCS delivers a message rather than a live call. Email messages are acknowledged by an autoreply generated by the system.

Remote and Distributed Operation

One of the major benefits of Universe's all-IP technology is that it makes remote and distributed operations a cost-effective option. At the beginning of any session, the Universe Agent software automatically communicates the current IP address (and, optionally, the telephone number) of the CSR.

Complete Location-Independence for Agents - at No Additional Cost

Universe frees call centers from their traditional physical constraints. A Universe Call Center can have multiple physical locations, all of them managed as a single entity. A Universe Call Center can even have no physical location at all - a truly virtual call center. Agents can be anywhere they have access to a multimedia PC and a connection to the managed IP network. They can work at home or be located in different offices throughout the world.

Scalability

CosmoCall Universe scales from small workgroups to vast enterprises. Most circuit-switched call center designs force customers to choose between a low capacity solution that cannot grow beyond a few dozen agents, and a high capacity solution that is cost prohibitive for less than a hundred or more agents. Because it is a software solution utilizing industry standard computer hardware, Universe does not need to cost-burden small implementations in order to provide capacity for future expansion. Universe provides a system that can start small and grow with an almost completely linear cost structure along the growth curve.

Carrier-Class Capacity, Reliability, and Security

Although Universe is cost effective in small configurations, an essential part of CosmoCom's mission is to provide solutions that fill the high-capacity/high-availability and security requirements of the mission-critical applications of world class companies. CosmoCall Universe is a carrier-class system for service providers and large scale corporate users, supporting multimedia customer interactions via all channels in one high capacity, high availability, multi-tenant platform. CosmoCall Universe readily delivers the capacity, reliability and security carriers and large enterprises require. One ACD server can support up to 20,000 agents and 50,000 simultaneous connections. It is installed in a redundant configuration with the second server in standby mode to take over in the event of a loss of service on the first. Additionally, the connection servers are installed in an N+1 configuration, enabling ready failover in the event of a hardware or software failure, or loss of incoming trunk line. 

Finally, CosmoCom recognizes the importance of security and uses proven Windows authentication technology to provide for access through any configurable firewall port.

Contact Center On-Demand™

As the above presentation of CosmoCall Universe illustrates, the system's all-IP architecture makes it uniquely suited for service providers to offer network-based Contact Center On-Demand services. The downloadable agent client enables service provider customers to add agents over their existing IP connections. Utilizing CosmoCall Universe's tenant self-administration features, service provider customers can manage their own virtual call centers without the overhead of managing IT infrastructure. And with CosmoCall Universe's scalability and reliability, service providers can have confidence that they are providing the mission-critical connections their customers need.

This schematic diagram of how a service provider would deploy the platform shows three different types of tenants. The tenant examples are highly simplified to illustrate that a CosmoCall Universe "tenant" can have one location or many, and can use one type of agent or any combination of the three types. In all cases, the core contact center infrastructure is deployed in the service provider's network. Tenants need only the agents, the IP connections, and, optionally, the telephone connections.