What do you do when you need to support hundreds of contact center agents? Not only can Asterisk can help--it can do so cost-effectively. (This session is for both business and technical users.) Explore concepts including: - Multi-node architecture - Virtualization - Queue and agent state federation - Redundancy & High-Availability - Reporting & Analytics

1. Presented by:
Corey S. McFadden, Voneto
CONTACT CENTERS
Scaling & Asterisk

2. Communications Solutions
Customer
Premises
• Business Phone Systems
• Contact Center Platforms
• Managed Services
Data Centers &
Cloud Platform
24 Hour Support / Network Operations
• Managed Telecom Services
• SIP Trunking
• DR & Business Continuity
• Cloud Phone Systems
• Cloud Contact Center
Partners
www.voneto.com
Scaling Asterisk Contact Centers – Astricon 2014
www.voneto.com – 215-344-2222
About Voneto

3. Scaling Asterisk Contact Centers – Astricon 2014
www.voneto.com – 215-344-2222
Voneto Operations

4. Scaling Asterisk Contact Centers – Astricon 2014
www.voneto.com – 215-344-2222
Why Voneto?
• Communications Focused
• National Customer Footprint
• 24x7 Support & Services Organization
• 3 Data Center Locations
• Pennsylvania, Virginia, Oregon
Voneto: 2014 Digium
Pinnacle Partner Award
Schedule 70 IT Prime Contractor

5. Scaling Asterisk Contact Centers – Astricon 2014
www.voneto.com – 215-344-2222
Some Customers…

6. Asterisk Contact Centers Overview
Scaling Asterisk Contact Centers – Astricon 2014
www.voneto.com – 215-344-2222

7. Scaling Asterisk Contact Centers – Astricon 2014
www.voneto.com – 215-344-2222
Typical Inbound Contact Centers
Small (<20 Agents)
• FreePBX / Elastix / Switchvox
• Basic Queue Configurations
• Ring All or Round Robin
• Basic Analytics
• Queuemetrics
• Asternic
• None
+

8. Scaling Challenges
Scaling Asterisk Contact Centers – Astricon 2014
www.voneto.com – 215-344-2222

9. Scaling Asterisk Contact Centers – Astricon 2014
www.voneto.com – 215-344-2222
Scaling Challenges
• Single Server Capacity / Risk
• Concurrent calls per server not unlimited.
• Influences: Factors such as call recording
• APP_QUEUE
• Monolithic dialplan application
• Lacks many features
• Stability issues under higher loads
• Not updated

10. Scaling Asterisk Contact Centers – Astricon 2014
www.voneto.com – 215-344-2222
Scaling Challenges
• CHAN_SIP
• Doesn’t scale extremely well.
• Largely secondary issue due to app_queue.

11. Some Solutions…
Scaling Asterisk Contact Centers – Astricon 2014
www.voneto.com – 215-344-2222

12. Scaling Asterisk Contact Centers – Astricon 2014
www.voneto.com – 215-344-2222
Scaling Solutions / Concepts
• Multi-Server
• Scale beyond single server limits
• N+1 Architecture
• Agent / Queue Federation
•Track call & agent states across multiple servers.
• Requires centralized call control
• FastAGI

13. Scaling Asterisk Contact Centers – Astricon 2014
www.voneto.com – 215-344-2222
Large-Scale Call Flow
PSTN
CTI
Server

14. Scaling Asterisk Contact Centers – Astricon 2014
www.voneto.com – 215-344-2222
Large-Scale System Admin
Admin UI
User Admin IVR Admin ACD Admin Endpoint Mgmt.
Unified Reporting

15. Scaling Asterisk Contact Centers – Astricon 2014
www.voneto.com – 215-344-2222
Other Contact Center Needs
• Predictive Dialing
• Agent Productivity Analytics
• Web Chat
• E-Mail Workflows
• Non-Communication Workflows (i.e. Backoffice)
• Speech Analytics
• Work Force Management

16. Agent & ACD Analytics
Agent Desktop
Screen Pop
Skills-Based Routing
Workforce Analytics
Scaling Asterisk Contact Centers – Astricon 2014
www.voneto.com – 215-344-2222
Asterisk Contact Centers Intro.
Basic PBX
ACD
Monitoring
Basic Asterisk
Recording
Asterisk + Web UI
CDR Analysis
Asterisk + Commercial Contact Center Solution
On-Screen Scripting
E-Mail & Chat
Predictive Dialer
Etc.

17. Commercial Products
Scaling Asterisk Contact Centers – Astricon 2014
www.voneto.com – 215-344-2222

18. Scaling Asterisk Contact Centers – Astricon 2014
www.voneto.com – 215-344-2222
Presence Technology
• Inbound
• Outbound
• Predictive, Progressive, Preview, Robo, etc.
• On-Screen Scripting
• Web Chat
• Social Media
• E-Mail
• Backoffice
• Unified Admin

19. PBX
UNIFIED
CORE
Scaling Asterisk Contact Centers – Astricon 2014
www.voneto.com – 215-344-2222
Presence Technology
CORE
ACD
DIALER
MULTI-CHANNEL
BACK-OFFICE
QUALITY
RECORD
IR / IVR BLENDING
SCRIPT
…

20. Scaling Asterisk Contact Centers – Astricon 2014
www.voneto.com – 215-344-2222
Commercial Products Continued…
• Wombat Dialer
• From Loway (Queuemetrics) here @ Astricon
• ViciDial
• Long-time open source solution
• Many Others…

21. Customer Examples
Scaling Asterisk Contact Centers – Astricon 2014
www.voneto.com – 215-344-2222

22. Scaling Asterisk Contact Centers – Astricon 2014
www.voneto.com – 215-344-2222
Medieval Times
• ~40 Agents
• Inbound Call Flow
• Customer Service & Ticket Sales
• Multi-Location
• Atlanta, GA & Brea, CA
• Skill & Time of Day Routing
• Language / Customer Service

23. Scaling Asterisk Contact Centers – Astricon 2014
www.voneto.com – 215-344-2222
Medieval Times

24. Scaling Asterisk Contact Centers – Astricon 2014
www.voneto.com – 215-344-2222
Arriva Medical
• ~800 Agents
• Inbound / Outbound
• Predictive Dialing
• “Robo Calling”
• Multi-Location
• Coral Springs, FL
• Phoenix, AZ
• Philippines
• Complex Needs

25. Scaling Asterisk Contact Centers – Astricon 2014
www.voneto.com – 215-344-2222
Arriva Medical

26. What’s Next?
Scaling Asterisk Contact Centers – Astricon 2014
www.voneto.com – 215-344-2222

27. Scaling Asterisk Contact Centers – Astricon 2014
www.voneto.com – 215-344-2222
Asterisk 13: ARI & PJSIP
• ARI API
• App-level Call Control
• Node.js
• Pair with central CTI for fine-grained call manipulation
• PJSIP
• Significant Scaling vs. CHAN_SIP

28. Lessons & Conclusions
Scaling Asterisk Contact Centers – Astricon 2014
www.voneto.com – 215-344-2222

29. Scaling Asterisk Contact Centers – Astricon 2014
www.voneto.com – 215-344-2222
Conclusions
• Large Scaling is Possible
• Many Approaches & Solutions
• Commercial Products Available
• Asterisk 13 = Bigger & Better Toolkit

30. Scaling Asterisk Contact Centers – Astricon 2014
www.voneto.com – 215-344-2222
Q & A
• Questions?
• E-Mail for Slide Deck