As the name implies, CTI (Computer-Telephone-Integration) is the fusing of telephone operations with those performed by a computer. CTI has actually been around for a good two decades. Until recently, it required users to (36) a good deal of knowledge about telephone interconnect processes as well as networking and database programming to (37) even the most rudimentary tasks. These two skill sets are rarely possessed by the same individual.
But today CTI has gone client/server. Microsoft corp. has included its client-side Telephony API (TAPI) with every copy of Windows 95. The company’s service-side TAPI is now available for Windows NT. There are many telephony (38) that turn the interconnect portion of a CTI (39) into standard data programming, and low-cost, easy -to- create telephony is born. Better yet, many of these (38) are Visual Basic add-ons. CTI is also subject to all the cost benefits of cheaper, PC-based hardware.
The two portions of CTI are (40)