December 3, 1996 1:50 PM ET

Scopus scopes out telecom business
By Jim Kerstetter

IT professionals in the telecommunications industry soon will be able to retrofit their older, host-based customer support applications with a shot of client/server technology. Scopus Technology Inc. is releasing this week its Telecom Central client/server suite, a customer service system tailored for telecom services providers. The suite will integrate with most traditional telecom operational-systems support applications, including host-based systems, Scopus officials said. The suite also gains capabilities for marketing, telesales and field sales customer service. Analysts said they were impressed with Scopus' first foray into vertical applications. "It really has some enhancements [so] that I thought, 'This is the ideal way that a company in this business should be doing things,'" said Tom Sweeny, an analyst at Dataquest Inc., in Westboro, Mass. The applications include SupportTeam, which creates workflow, task managers and information ticklers automatically; SalesTeam, which allows telecom providers to target customers for specific sales pitches; TeleTeam, which links Scopus applications into a telecom company's middleware to enable voice and data synchronization, routing, screen pops, call transfers, conferencing and queue management; Scopus DataBridge, which includes a set of APIs to link the Scopus applications to legacy systems and other business applications; and SmartScript Call Scripting Engine, which helps create scripts for operators. Other applications included in the suite are billing and order entry, a contract manager and a tool set for tailoring the system. The 32-bit suite runs on most 32-bit clients and on Unix and Windows NT servers. It will be available in the first half of 1997 and will cost about $3,000 per user. Scopus, in Emeryville, Calif., can be reached at www.scopus.com. Copyright(c) 1996 Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company is prohibited. PC Week and the PC Week logo are trademarks of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. PC Week Online and the PC Week Online logo are trademarks of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. Send mail to PC Week