Developed and evolved over a ten-year period, Intelliverse’s platforms are fifth-generation technology being implemented around the world.
Messaging Services Platform
Voice Services Platform
SIP Services Platform
Messaging Services Platform (MSP)
Typically, Unified Messaging solutions patch together disparate e-mail, voice mail, faxing, and paging products, each implementing different technologies. The result is a costly, complex, and inefficient messaging solution.
Low-cost, single-store messaging.
To streamline this process, Intelliverse’s revolutionary Messaging Services Platform (MSP) is built on a single message store, an industry first. Engineered from the ground up, our open, Unix-based platform seamlessly consolidates e-mail, voice mail, faxes, and pages into a single source. This applies to messages containing any type of data, including text, voice, video, images, and audio.
This flexibility allows messages to be managed with significantly greater cost efficiencies, eliminating the need for costly, complex hardware and maintenance. And, it creates the ability to scale messaging services for millions of users around the world, decreasing your costs as your subscriber base rises.
Ease of use for subscribers.
Intelliverse MSP also has benefits for your subscribers. It enables them to access messages from a single intuitive interface, letting them view, create, and manage all messages from any Internet-enabled computer, anywhere in the world. MSP also allows your customers to consolidate all e-mails into a single, convenient inbox for simpler, more streamlined communications. And when they're ready to send a message, this robust platform lets them broadcast to as many recipients as they want, in different formats — from e-mail to faxes to pager messages.
Intelliverse MSP creates a superior user experience, and its simplicity helps to keep your customer support costs down.
The Database
Talking Planet is, essentially, a relational database with the ability to manage and manipulate arbitrary objects with very little overhead. These objects, audio, text, video, or any other complex structure, are transformed into neutral objects (Talking Planet Objects) that are then identified and cataloged into the database. Each of these Talking Planet Objects is tagged with ‘header’ information describing the contents (owner, mime type, sub type, size, date, subject, from, to, etc.). The Oracle database uses this header information to quickly determine what to do with each object (e.g., save it, copy it to other users, send it, schedule it for delivery at a later time, etc.).
The database is responsible for keeping track of the presence and state of information pertaining to transactions. Each transaction has defining features such as owner, time of transaction, destination, billing, etc. It tracks where the message is from, where it is going, the cost of the transaction, and so forth. It does not, however, track the contents of the message. That is handled by the LWTS.
Message Consolidation & Storage
E-mail consolidation is performed by the system to retrieve e-mails from other POP3 servers designated by the subscriber/user. This e-mail consolidation can be performed either on an automatic schedule or an on-demand basis. The procedure, which is normally scheduled into the user’s profile, calls the processes of the PollPOP3 Lightweight. These processes pass the user’s login ID and password to the various remote servers and fetch the respective e-mail.
First, the PollPOP3 lightweight is signaled to activate a synchronization session. This is done either internally at timed intervals or via a request from a client application (e.g. Web).
In either case, the PollPOP3 lightweight connects to the designated external POP3 server simulating POP3 client interfaces (1). Once a connection has been achieved and authentication is completed, the PollPOP3 lightweight proceeds to synchronize the TM Mailbox with that of the external POP3 store by (2) retrieving e-mail that the TM system has not seen before.
Each time the PollPOP3 lightweight identifies and retrieves a new unseen message, it then proceeds to disassemble the message into its component parts and deposits the Metadata and Envelope (4) into the TM Database and the message content (3) into the TM Message store.
Lightweight Translation Services
The Talking Planet System Server is at a high level a three-tiered architecture. At the top, or presentation, layer, Talking Planet is comprised of a series of Lightweight Translation Services, or LightWeighTS (LWTS). These Lightweights merely act as gateways between different protocols or signaling mechanisms.
LWTS are a set of applications built on standard Application Programming Interface (API) modules. APIs are able to take Tornado Messenger Objects, along with instruction from the database, and manipulate them in almost any way desired. The Tornado Messenger Server, SMTP, POP3, PollPOP3, IMAP4, LDAP, MAPI, and HTTP services are all examples of LWTS. The power of a LWTS comes from its simplistic design goal: translate a known message format into another known message format.
The function of the Lightweight Translation Services is to convert messages from one protocol into the Talking Planet Protocol or vice-versa.
The conversion process performs three functions:
- Protocol simulation
- Protocol conversion
- Deposit-to/retrieval-from the persistent store
Protocol Simulation
During protocol simulation, the particular Lightweight mimics the external protocol to which the system is either transmitting or receiving information from. For example, in order for any system to receive e-mail on the Internet, it must support the SMTP Server protocols defined in the Internet RFC 821 and its accompanying extensions. In this reference, ‘support’ refers to the exact mimicking of SMTP Server responses to SMTP Client requests. The TM Lightweight that accepts inbound e-mail from the Internet must therefore mimic exactly SMTP protocols and respond appropriately to SMTP Client Commands as directed by the RFC. What the Lightweight does with the information gathered during a ‘mimicking’ session with the client is explained in the next section “Protocol Conversion”
Protocol Conversion
During the protocol conversion phase, messages are converted from their original protocol (e.g. SMTP, fax, HTML etc.) into the neutral Talking Planet Protocol (TPP). The conversion process involves disassembling a message into its base components (header, body, attachments, etc.) The header information is stored in the database, and the body is stored in the persistent store, the user’s message store. These base components comprise “neutral objects”. The advantage of storing messages in this format is that these objects can be reassembled into other message types (for example from e-mail to fax) without having the original message either run through a conversion process, or having to be stored separately in multiple message formats.
Deposit-to/retrieval-from the persistent store
During this phase, each, now neutral, message is assigned a unique identifier, which identifies its location within the Message Store. Each component of the original message is also assigned a separate identifier. These identifiers are stored in the database and serve as a pointer to either a message or component of a message within the Message Store. During this final phase of processing, the converted Neutral Message is stored in the message store on the Tornado Server. It is now available to be retrieved and/or reassembled for transmission back out to another message format.
Voice Services Platform (VSP)
Designed to operate independently as well as in combination with our Messaging Services Platform, our Voice Services Platform (VSP) powers Intelliverse’s feature-rich voice mail and voice portal products.
An award-winning platform, Intellivese VSP supports voice mail and voice portal, enabling voice mail, faxing, paging, speech recognition, text-to-speech, voice portal, and call services. Intelliverse VSP supports Speech Recognition and text-to-speech technologies from such industry leaders as Nuance and Speech Works.
Using Intelliverse VSP, you can offer your customers an array of feature-rich messaging functionality, including:
- Listening to voice mail online
- Managing all voice mail from any touch tone phone in the world
- Forwarding, saving, and deleting messages on a cell phone with the touch of a button
- Accessing entire Address Book by phone
Lower costs, more revenue.
Intelliverse VSP's open, flexible technology delivers the industry's lowest cost of ownership, while allowing you to generate more revenue from in-demand voice, fax, and voice portal features. In its third generation, Intelliverse VSP was written using Microsoft DCOM and .NET technology, and supports multiple types of hardware from leading vendors including Natural Micro Systems (NMS) and Dialogic. Intelliverse VSP can operate independently or can be tightly integrated with e-mail and faxing services for a complete messaging solution.
The initial point of integration into the PSTN is the Intelliverse Voice Services Platform (VSP). A VSP consists of a stand-alone special-purpose computer, (a fault tolerant, redundant, Intel-chip based chassis running Windows 2000 Server) which interfaces to the PSTN as well as IP networks. It may be set up for faxing, paging, voice messages or a combination of all three — it is pre-configured with the appropriate software and hardware to perform all three functions. It is important to understand that the database contains all configuration data for each VSP in the system. A key step in the VSP initialization sequence is to query the database at startup and retrieve this configuration information.
Intelliverse VSP uses the DID table to route voice messages and faxes to individual users. This table is maintained in the Oracle database and maps server-assigned phone numbers to member PINs. Member PINs are the numbers that uniquely identify users within our server. The DID table is updated on the appropriate VSP each time a new user registers onto the server.
VSP is a combination of the soft switch (for call trafficking) and the media gateway.
SM (Softswitch and Media Server)
The Softswitch and Media Server currently utilize NMS (DSPs) to manage the switching services. The NMS hardware comes in capacities ranging from single DS1s to multiple DS3s. The Media Server features include Voicemail, IVR, speech recognition, faxing, and TTS, plus other call flow and messaging-related services. The Softswitch is responsible for all VoIP-to-PSTN and PSTN-to-VoIP switching. The foundation of the Softswitch has been in operation for over 8 years and is continually enhanced.
SOME SINGULAR/PLURAL ISSUES WITH VSP….
The VSP can be configured in such a way that they are completely redundant, and so all contain the same DID table, and phone calls are routed to a particular VSP from the telephone company PSTN switch (T1/E1 line) in a round-robin fashion. They can also be configured in such a way that each VSP handles only a certain range of numbers.
The most typical deployment of a VSP is the Cubix box. It is comprised of two segments, each of which can hold a single instance of the VSP. Each segment contains its own power supply, disk drives, and supports a passive PCI back plane for maximum fault tolerance. Each segment is capable of providing service for up to eight T1/E1 lines.
The number of VSPs needed in a system depends primarily on:
- The number of users that will be hosted by the system.
- The types of applications available for the users on the system.
- The usage patterns of the users on the system.
Other factors may also affect the number of VSP allocated; such as the type of service the system will mostly provide (voice mailing, faxing, paging) and the way the VSP is configured (single or dual setup). You may allocate a primary VSP and a backup VSP to ensure an uninterrupted connection.
SIP Services Platform (SSP)
Proxy – The Sip Proxy server runs on Enterprise Linux from SUSE. The SIP stack is a fully licensed source code version from Hughes Software Systems. The proxy server has been in operation for over 2 years.
Registrar – The Registrar runs on Enterprise Linux from SUSE. The SIP stack is a fully licensed source code version from Hughes Software Systems. The Registrar has been in operation for over 2 years.
Notifier – The SIP Notifier is running on Enterprise Linux from SUSE. The SIP stack is a fully licensed version from Hughes Software Systems. The Notifier has been in operation for over 2 years.
