Over the last decade, Asterisk has impacted VoIP telephony and PBX with its power, flexibility and versatility. Asterisk 1.4 has now reached a level of stability and maturity that makes it a viable platform for medium and large contact centers migrating to IP telephony. Availability of feature rich call center software for Asterisk presents an opportunity to bring about greater efficiency, better productivity and lower costs with an Asterisk based next generation IP contact center platform.
Contact center software communication with the underlying PBX is accomplished through the CTI Interface. Call center ACD software leveraging Asterisk use its extensive Manager Interface capabilities for CTI integration. Functionally separate, the ACD can communicate and scale seamlessly to multiple Asterisk servers to accommodate larger capacity. Asterisk 1.4 has matured into a stable and robust PBX platform which in combination with a good scalable multi-tenant call center software can form the backbone of medium to large call centers using a technology stack of Linux, Asterisk, Apache and MySQL.
There are some new capabilities within Asterisk 1.8 that will make it easier for CTI Integration and Contact Center feature development. One significant enhancement from Asterisk 1.4 to Asterisk 1.8 is the ability to bridge channels directly. This will minimize the use of ‘MeetMe’, allow direct implementation of more demanding transfer functionality and reduce processor load.
This all bodes well for contact centers that rely on Asterisk for PBX. More powerful and sophisticated contact centers at lower cost driven by the power house of PBX, Asterisk. It is important that the contact center software also provide comprehensive real-time and historical reporting by capturing granular cradle to grave data.