The communicating PC

As the PC entered its second decade of evolution, it started a transformation into a general-purpose communication tool. This article takes a look at a number of established and emerging technologies that contribute to this ongoing transformation of the PC. Although each of these technologies individually is perfectly capable of enabling compelling PC applications in specific market segments, it is their use in combination that potentially supports the most useful real-world communications applications. The ability of an applications program to use seemingly independent technologies in concert is no coincidence, but requires proper upfront consideration and careful design. This article presents technologies and common interfaces promoted by Intel for the Microsoft Windows family of operating systems. Although several alternative solutions exist and are promoted by others, none of them offer the degree of interworking needed to make the “communicating PC” a coherent entity. We start by taking a look at the PC´s role in computer telephony integration (CTI) and go on to consider call processing, protocol-independent data transport, simultaneous voice/data communication, unattended PC operation, plug and play CTI peripherals and mainstream implementations