Most NEC NEAX 2000 IPS or IVS telephone systems will also have an accompanying application server in some shape or form to add lots of bells and whistles to the entire telephony system. At it's most basic, it may provide a voicemail system or operator console. However, an accompanying application server can scale upwards to include a huge array of services.

The NEC 2000 IPS is regarded by many as a fairly old-school enterprise phone system - and as a result, rather than try to utilise any of the NEC functions for Voicemail, Uniform Call Distribution (UCD) or Computer Integration (CTI), most customers in the UK, and indeed throughout New Zealand, Australia and the USA aquired a Zeacom Communications Center as well.

In the UK there were only really three options if you wanted voicemail for the NEC IPS - that was to either by an AD8 voicemail card, which was essentially a linux-based PC on a card, with a 2.5" hard drive - very unreliable (spinning hard drive without any form of redundancy)  and not very management-friendly. Secondly there was the option of NEC or Philips' own voicemail and CTI applications, and lastly you could use the Zeacom.

Zeacom products were originally called Corus (for voicemail) and Q-Master (for call/contact centre) - and somewhere in the middle was CTI and it's associated applications. More recently, Zeacom rebranded their extensive product portfolio as the Zeacom Communication Center (sic) - which encompasses everything they provide in one neat portfolio. The most popular parts that make up any Zeacom installation include Console, Desktop, Voicemail, Reports and Wallboard.

Zeacom applications reside on a seperate Windows-based server and controlled the PBX using an NEC feature called OAI (Open Application Interface) - essentially a closed developer protocol to control the phone system. This OAI protocol could either be sent via RS232 or more commonly via a TCP/IP network. There would also sometimes be analogue connections between the Zeacom server and the PBX to send and recieve voice recordings, although more recently this is done via VoIP.

A Call Center is possibly the 2nd most likely component of an appication server - many providing full multimedia, networked call center solution with comprehensive management, reporting, live statistics, IVR, Auto Attendants, Callback, Web and Chat modules - the list is almost endless.

The OAI interface is probably Zeacom's greatest weapon, as it allows full control and oversight of the phone system - the server can report everything that is going on back to the end user, control devices and fully manage the NEC 2000 IPS live. This enables certain software programs, like Desktop for the standard user and Console for the operator to show a huge array of live information - such as who is at their desks, who is out of the office, who is on the phone, what calls are in the queue, how many people are on hold and so on.

If you have any specific problems with your Zeacom solve which you simply cannot resolve, then please get in touch.