Fusing BI with Telephony

In a recent blog post, I discussed the importance of integration between telephony platforms and systems that integrate directly with the business model: http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/28178 In “Is It True Integration?,” the focus about integrating these telephony applications with other business systems was to provide services and integration that the user directly sees. But, what about valuable integration on the back-end. BI, or Business Intelligence, is a buzzword that will likely be around for awhile, and rightfully so. BI focuses on organized repositories, commonly referred to as the “data warehouse.” How does this integrate with telecom, you say? It’s all about the broader picture, and the ability to combine information from many diverse sources and bring them together, cohesively. Take the Splunk platform for instance. Splunk, while initially developed for the BI counterpart of IT-Intelligence, is a prime example of a mashup environment that can look at all aspects of IT, including telecommunications. While crude in some ways, yet sophisticated in others, it’s systems like these that will prove to be very valuable in the future. Is it Big Brother? Sure, it really is. But, is it justified? Combining logs from PBX CDRs, database queries, web traffic logs, and authentications, it becomes increasingly easy to get a play-by-play on any employee that resides on any IT system within a company. Intrusive yes, but it’s also valuable. In a mirror image, the same features can be cultivated from the client perspective. To wrap up this discussion, it’s important to note one thing: Telephony, too, is moving in the way of BI.