Charles Bass Consulting Services

CTI (Computer Telephony Integration)

Short for "Computer Telephony Integration," CTI is a label covering a number of different types of solutions. As its name implies, CTI is the convergence of telephone traffic that runs over your data network infrastructure by computers that can act as a call center to accept incoming calls and route telephone traffic to the appropriate device or person.

CTI is also used as a label for unified messaging, also known as the unified inbox. Unified messaging/unified inbox is the aggregation of all forms of communication into a single resource. In plain English, it is a single storage for all messages sent to you whether the message be a n e-mail, voice mail message, or fax.

CTI holds great promise for aggregating voice and data network traffic, however, as with any leading-edge technology, it is still fairly complicated to implement, expensive and geared at large corporations. This is not to say that CTI may not be an appropriate solution for smaller companies.

A further word of caution, while integrating voice, fax and data allows for a unified in box, it comes at the cost of creating a single point of failure that could prove to be devastating to an organization and its ability to function.