So what can you do with the StarPound platform? Quite a lot!
- Build Internet-based voice applications (IP PBX, click-to-call, conferencing, unified communications, collaboration, & more)
- Power contact centers of all sizes
- Create and manage web services involving any form of data and/or voice
- Model, deploy, and manage customer interaction workflows
- Automate your mission-critical business processes
If you can envision it, you can model it, and deploy it. At the center of StarPound is a model-driven platform for developing applications that leverage network convergence (the merging of voice and data on the Internet). By utilizing StarPound’s inherent technology, StarPound applications provide rich experiences and sophisticated interactions by simultaneously managing voice and data.
StarPound makes it easy for a single application to integrate the following types of interactions:
- Web forms
- Web collaboration (chat, click-to-talk, click-to-callback, and page sharing)
- Telephony (receiving, initiating, and managing calls)
- Interactive Voice Response (IVR) menus with speech recognition and text-to-speech
- Data management through web services and relational databases
- Business process workflow with skills-based routing and end-to-end task management
- Incoming and outgoing email
You can use StarPound to:
- Create and deploy composite web and voice applications
- Create front-end web and voice applications for existing systems
- Receive incoming calls, email, faxes, and web service requests and initiate a process workflow
- Route incoming calls based on skills and permissions, display screens of related data on the caller
- Initiate and manage outbound calls
- Establish chat, click-to-talk, click-to-callback, and web page sharing sessions with customers
As mentioned, StarPound seamlessly integrates voice and data in one application. A StarPound application can be initiated by a web link, by an incoming phone call or email, or by an incoming web service request. Once initiated, the application can guide a customer through a web or voice interaction, storing data in an XML document or RowSet data structure. StarPound retrieves data from external systems using web services or database functions, and utilizes that data in web forms, voice prompts, outgoing email, or web service responses.In workflow applications, StarPound creates a work assignment and dynamically routes the assignment through the process based on skills, permissions, financial costs, and availability of the workforce.
Converged Applications: The B2B Mashup
Traditional “stovepipe” application development produced separate applications for each type of information. Integrating data between stovepipe applications was tedious and expensive.
StarPound applications, on the other hand, orchestrate data from multiple systems using a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach. Converged applications (aka “mashups”) pull together data from services across the network and unify them under one user interface.
A converged application is one that integrates data from multiple sources (voice, web, video, email, and back-office data) to give a complete view of something, such as a customer or a transaction. For example:
- A contact center campaign integrating CRM and other back office data with a customer phone call
- An insurance claims processing scenario, where data from multiple sources must be incorporated into dynamic agent workflows
- Web-based “message blaster” for sending outbound phone, email, SMS, IM, and other notifications
- Collaborative support site offering the choice of chat, instant browser call , callback, and web page sharing
The screenshot above illustrates a perfect example of StarPound in action. In less than 30 days, the StarPound team created a complete B2B mashup for an international contact center customer, bringing relevant data from their CRM, Financial, and Knowledge Management systems into a unified browser-based solution for their agents and employees.
But StarPound’s platform is not limited to use simply within contact centers. StarPound brings a rich, diverse set of functionality together into a single, unified development environment. StarPound applications integrate:
- Business process workflow with skills-based routing and end-to-end task management
- Web collaboration (chat, click-to-talk, click-to-callback, and page sharing)
- Telephony (receiving, initiating, and managing calls)
- Interactive Voice Response (IVR) menus with speech recognition and text-to-speech
- Data management and integration through web services and relational databases
- Interactive web forms
- Incoming and outgoing email, FAX, SMS, etc.
Where and How is StarPound Being Used?
StarPound is currently being used a variety of different scenarios, including:
- Customer contact centers
- B2B Marketplaces
- Internet community sites
- Enterprise 2.0-rich social networks
- Advanced e-commerce and CRM applicationsOrganizations are using StarPound to:
- Create and deploy composite web and voice applications
- Power enterprise-sized call centers that are driven by model-driven agent workflows and business processes
- Create front-end web and voice applications for existing systems
- Receive incoming calls, email, faxes, and web service requests and initiate a process workflow
- Route work items (incoming telephone calls, emails, chat requests, transactions, and other types of requests) based on skills and permissions
- Create custom mashups for screen pops, integrating data from multiple disparate backend systems
- Initiate and manage outbound calls
- Establish chat, click-to-talk, click-to-callback, and web page sharing sessions with customers
For more detailed examples of how StarPound can be used to solve specific problems across a variety of industries, please contact us.
The StarPound Software Stack
Out of the box, StarPound is built on open source technologies like Linux, Asterisk, and JBoss, which can run fine even on inexpensive commodity hardware. For those seeking a more robust solution, StarPound can be used with certain commercial alternatives, and scaled horizontally to achieve high-availability performance.
The underlying components are replaceable, provided the replacement alternative follows the requisite standards. We are aware of users and customers that have deployed on Windows-based servers, WebSphere as the J2EE application server, and Oracle as the backend database. However, those platforms are not directly supported by StarPound Technologies (the company) unless a prior (special) maintenance/support arrangement is made first.
And if you’re using .NET, Ruby, PHP, or some other platform as your primary development platform, no worries. StarPound CORE™ is fully SOA based – so all of your StarPound applications and services and accessible via simple SOAP or REST calls. Many of our users and customers routinely deploy back-end business processes and web services with StarPound, and access them directly via another language such as PHP, Ruby, and .NET.