ClearOne's Max Wireless Conference Phone
Desktop conference telephones - "saucerphones" - have achieved middling-high levels of market penetration. While PolyCom (Pleasanton, CA - 800-765-9266, www.polycom.com) is the obvious leader in this space, the core market is still growing. There's room for innovation and competition. And buyers - increasingly comfortable and familiar with desktop speakerphone features and benefits - are alert to viable alternatives.
In early July, ClearOne Communications (Salt Lake City, UT - 800-945-7730, www.clearone.com) let us trial a late prototype of their new Max Wireless conference telephone - a "saucerphone" that differentiates itself effectively from competition, while aiming squarely at the middle of this profitable market.
Most other desktop conference phones (in fact, I think all others) are wired devices, requiring power and a telephone line connection. There's usually a single, fairly slender combination cable carrying analog voice and DC current to the box. This runs to a transformer that plugs into an AC outlet, and has an RJ-11 connection to a nearby wall jack. In a high-class conference room, the combo cable runs through a grommet in the conference room tabletop, thence to an embedded AC outlet and phone connection - so it never becomes a menace to navigation (except when you want to move the speakerphone, at which point, you discover that the cable has been tied down somewhere inside the table pedestal.) In the real world, of course, these cables are exposed - they run across the conference table, down to the floor, and either over or under the carpet to wall service. So they're frequently tripped over. And since they're "custom," annoying to replace.
The new ClearOne Max is wireless - it runs on a LiIon rechargeable battery pack and talks (via 2.4 GHz spread spectrum) to a cleverly designed, monolithic base station that plugs directly into an AC outlet and incorporates an RJ-11 jack for the phone line. The saucer itself recharges by plugging into a small DC supply. The battery pack supports up to eight hours of talk time and 36 hours of active standby, so you don't have to be religious about remembering to plug it in. If you run out of juice, the device can function while it's recharging, so even in this eventuality, you're no worse off than if you had a wired unit.
Wireless means the device is portable. The 2.4 GHz radio stage is said to work well over distances up to 150 feet, so if you're just going office-to-office, you don't have to move the base station. Just pick up the phone, set it down in a new location, and dial. At first, this doesn't seem like a big deal, but it changes the ergonomics of desktop conferencing considerably, and probably the economics, as well. People will find creative ways to use portable conference phones. They'll probably use them more frequently (as opposed to desktop speakerphones or outside services). The result is better ROI. Of course, portability may also let you get away with buying fewer phones, depending on your needs. Meanwhile, up to eight Max phones (each with its base station) can coexist within range of one another - the spread-spectrum system monitors frequencies in use and will navigate each unit to its own piece of uncontended bandwidth.
In other respects, the ClearOne Max works like any high-quality conference phone. The top-mounted central speaker is heavy and robust: far-end sound is bright and clear. Built-in mics in the base of the unit point in three directions: input from each is echo-cancelled and background-noise-abated. Full-duplex is well supported, and the echo cancellers train fast enough to avoid much perceptible onset clipping of voice-band audio. The background-noise suppression worked well against the hum of a noisy A/C unit in our labs. The phone seems to reproduce both male and female voices with good fidelity, and doesn't introduce uncomfortable ringing or overtones. The wireless circuit is free of clicks, pops, or other overt strangeness (this is digital radio, after all), and influences sound quality only minimally - less perceptibly than most high-quality wireless extension systems.
The Max is equipped with basic controls, including a standard keypad; small LCD display; volume; mute; a ten-number speed-dial directory; and a dedicated (programmable) speed-dial key that lets you connect to a conference service bureau. MSRP is $699. A wired version, called Max EX, costs a little less. Unlike competitors, which extend to cover larger conference tables using satellite mics, the EX manages this trick by letting you daisy-chain up to four units together, using standard RJ-45 cables. Pretty cool - since participants get a nearby speaker as well as a mic.
Metropolis Technologies' OfficeWatch
We love OfficeWatch 7.0 - PC-based business call accounting from Metropolis Technologies (La Jolla, CA - 858-488-4600, www.metropolis.com). Though the package can poll from remote sites (and has recently been made compatible with IP/FTP call record buffers from WTI and Omnitronix), it also sports powerful realtime traffic-monitoring features. It watches for alarm conditions, telabuse, and emergencies (e.g., someone dials 911) and alerts you by spoken prompt, audible alarm, pager and/or email. Realtime traffic and trunk-utilization graphs give you a "heads up" display of PBX functionality. A unique HotSpot Map lets you visualize where calls are going by destination geographic region - useful for, among other things, tracking telabuse.
Installed using simple wizards, OfficeWatch is engineered for minimal maintenance - it deduces new extensions and other in-service PBX programming changes by watching the CDR data-stream, and periodically housecleans and optimizes its internal database without manual intervention. It uses your registration telephone number to identify local, long distance and intraLATA calls, combining this information with custom or carrier-supplied rate table data to insure proper call pricing. Subsequent markup (if required) is exceptionally flexible, and can include special items such as costs associated with telephone set rental for specific extensions. OfficeWatch also supports account codes and user PIN numbers for client/matter billing.
Reporting in OfficeWatch has recently been enhanced with the addition of a secure web-based front-end, permitting authorized managers to generate reports from any browser-equipped workstation. Ad-hoc reporting is fast and simple, thanks to a powerful search front end and back-side SQL database engine. Canned and customized reports can be run on schedule and saved to disk, printed, faxed, or distributed by email.
Metropolis offers a year's free service (including 24/7 emergency service) with each OfficeWatch purchase, and will let you extend the service contract thereafter for a nominal fee - a fee that also entitles you to receive software upgrades at no charge, as they become available. Their customers rave about them. They also make ProfitWatch - call accounting for the hospitality industry. Trial versions of either package can be downloaded free from Metropolis' website.
SDT's Apogee Series
Strategic Data and Telecom (Naperville, IL - 800-411-6945, www.sdtinc.com) makes the powerful Apogee series of SQL-based call accounting packages - including a Lite edition (up to about 150 seats), a Desktop edition (<5,000 seats and a million call records), and a full-scale Enterprise edition with unlimited seats and CDR storage. The Lite and Desktop versions run on the MSDE embedded version of SQL - the Enterprise edition runs on a full version of SQL server that must be licensed separately. Configuration is simple: six wizards assist you in importing directory and other data.
The system can run in polling mode against a range of buffers or call record databases (as are used by Cisco, 3COM and other IP PBXs), or in realtime. Unlimited toll fraud alarms stimulate notification by pager and email: a real-time call monitor lets you keep track of your switch is doing, moment to moment.
Apogee lets you build your costing database directly from telco-provided rate tables, enhanced with sophisticated customizable markup and billing rules. Calls can be tracked and billed by account codes, DNIS, authorization codes, trunks, or other data points.
A sophisticated ad-hoc query tool and embedded Crystal Reports engine let you access Apogee's powerful core database, generating immediate or scheduled reports and exporting to a wide variety of formats. Reports can be printed, faxed, or emailed to authorized recipients. Apogee can generate both inside and outside (i.e., client) billing - a huge time- and error-saver.
Information strategies
We goofed in several places in writing up Information Strategies Group in last month's call accounting feature. Herewith, the corrected URL: (www.infostrategiesgroup.com). The name of their excellent, web-presented call accounting product/service is BillingIT, as shown in the graphic, not BillIT, as appeared in text. We regret the error.
