This week witnessed several developments in the IVR arena, one of which was Plum Voice’s upgrade of its IVR services and communications solutions.

The upgraded communications infrastructure will increase capacity and provide even greater redundancy, failover and disaster recovery services to its customers, company officials said. It can now handle even larger call spikes and higher outbound call volumes, while providing each Plum customer with excess capacity, reported TMC’s (News - Alert) Rajani Baburajan.

The company has installed improved gateways to enable greater call-routing flexibility to provide easy access to a number of telecommunications networks. This will enable dynamic real-time call routing between datacenters.

A new database cluster for the core database has more space to accommodate customer growth and incorporates servers that are six times faster. The new cluster also isolates the core database from the tool databases such as Floodlight and QuickFuse for better performance.

TMC’s Susan Campbell also reported on thoughts from Plum concerning emergency response systems and how they can be tied to IVR. “In the past, 911 response systems were designed to only process incoming phone calls. The new plan, by contrast, will allow for the transmission of text messages, videos, photos, voice calls and more. The new system will also enable the automatic location information capture on individuals calling 911,” wrote Campbell.

The industry also saw some acquisitions this week including one between PNG and Siemens (News - Alert) Enterprise. TMC’s Anil Sharma wrote, “PNG, which currently provides energy to more than 359,000 homes in Western Pennsylvania, plans to upgrade to a robust communications, contact center, and unified communications (UC) environment.” 

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO West 2011, taking place Sept. 13-15, 2011, in Austin, Texas. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. To register, click here.

Juliana Kenny graduated from the University of Connecticut with a double degree in English and French. After managing a small company for two years, she joined TMC as a Web Editor for TMCnet. Juliana currently focuses on the call center and CRM industries, but she also writes about cloud telephony and network gear including softswitches.