Asterisk, from its humble beginning in 1999, has evolved into a strong telephony platform, due to the contribution from thousands of volunteer software and telecommunication experts worldwide. Today, Asterisk is a proven, open source, next-generation telephone switch, that has been tested and implemented by millions of users. It has been successfully used to migrate out of thousands of legacy proprietary telephone switches.
In contact center technology platform, the underlying telephone switch is usually a large portion of the cost of a packaged proprietary contact center technology solution. The availability of advanced call center software for Asterisk makes is possible to deliver a feature-rich next generation call center solution with immediate cost savings.
There has been a keen interest in scaling Asterisk for deployment in large enterprise call centers. This is possible with the use of a Call Center ACD that can scale and manage multiple Asterisk servers as media servers for voice. In a federated model, the deployment covers locations that are geographically apart. Such a deployment will allow traffic to originate and end in different locations, allow agents to join the same ACD queues from different locations, and provide effective call routing and distribution.
One of the big advantage of a federated deployment is the effective use of skills based routing provided by the Call Center ACD. Providing 24 x 7 service using a geographically dispersed work-force is an effective way to meet customer expectation and provide effective customer service.