September 16, 2008
By Richard Grigonis, Executive Editor, IP Communications Group

Stroll over to Booth #313 at the INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO in the Los Angeles Convention Center, and you’ll encounter Basis Audionet of Hamburg, Germany, a global full-service IT organization that develops and supports innovative platform solutions for wireline, wireless and next-generation IP network operators, and various services to resellers, carriers, ISPs and CNOs. They offer consulting, development and integration along with the hosting and housing of system hardware, all with full after-sales support. Basis Audionet has also combined telecom value-added solutions development and customer management to yield a wide spectrum of solutions focused on Customer Relations Management (CRM). As a “One Stop Shop” they offer technological expertise in switching, media gateways, application servers and application development.

Basis Audionet made its way onto the telecom scene in an interesting way. It started as an advertising agency in 1968 in Germany, and eventually evolved and expanded into a global communication technology business. Between 1968 and 2008, Basis Audionet developed a chat application platform for Deutsche Telekom, a call center voicemail system that had 3 million users by 2000, acquired CenterCall, and developed its Central Access Solution (CAS), which handles more than 50 million calls each day.

By 2003, the company recognized that IP would ultimately dominate the communications world. As a result, it switched its hardware form factor from a VMEbus computer architecture to CompactPCI, which at the time was widely seen as a future-proof “telecom” computing platform. That in turn led in 2006 to the
development of its Multi-Client Communications Suite (MCCS), an IP Communications soft client that coalesces the many types of communications media in use today (VoIP, IM, video telephony) into a single, standalone client application. The flexibility and scope of MCCS is such that Basis Audionet can extend their technology lifecycle without losing the ability to adapt to emerging technical developments and new services and applications.

At ITEXPO West in Los Angeles, Basis Audionet has on display the latest version of its new Communications Client, a “value-add” softphone for the more than 600,000 customers of carriers already running the Basis Audionet Multi-Client Communications Suite. The client enables users to access voice, video, IM and other media without having to buy an IP phone or other hardware. With an intuitive user interface and the ability to combine various forms of media into a single portable application, the Basis Audionet’s ingenious Communications Client greatly simplifies communications, with “zero-touch configuration” (the client can be plugged directly into the network, so a preconfigured setup and can be automatically downloaded) and utilization of HTTPs-tunneling to provide seamless user functionality independent of access technology and common network firewall settings. This enables the new soft client to bring effortless real-time audio and video communications to just about any IP network environment, ranging from enterprises to private residences to even your friendly local Internet café.

Aside from its considerable range of call, contact, IM and presence management features, the soft client also supports advertising server integration and a Web-based Self-Care Portal.

Carriers, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), resellers, MSOs and providers of social networking communities searching for new revenue streams and increased customer retention should find Basis Audionet’s Communications Client particularly attractive.

Basis Audionet’s Matthias Ziebenbein, director of business development for North America, said, “Other softphones are not ‘skinable.’ But ours is a white label product that providers can brand as their own.”

“Moreover, by connecting the soft phone client with the underlying communications suite on the network via middleware, a user can shut down the client, activate it later and still be able to immediately access missed-call and voice notification information that accumulated while they were offline,” added Ziebenbein. “The system’s presence capabilities will also give Skype and its brethren a run for the money, unlike many competing proprietary softphones.”

Although the product is tailored for Basis Audionet’s own MCCS IP communications platform, it can be adapted to other systems. As it happens, Basis Audionet has considerable experience working with other companies – for example, it has many times in the past worked as an integrator, producing interfaces to Cisco communications systems and Alcatel voicemail applications.

Learn more about Basis Audionet at INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO - the biggest and most comprehensive IP communications event of the year. ITEXPO will take place in Los Angeles, California, September 16-18, 2008, featuring three valuable days of exhibits, conferences, and networking opportunities you can’t afford to miss. Visit Basis Audionet at booth #313 in the exhibit hall. Don’t wait. Register now!


Richard Grigonis is Executive Editor of TMC’s IP Communications Group.

Edited by Michelle Robart