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PABX Management Application
Today most companies use a PABX telephone system of some kind. Business generated using telephone systems is phenomenal and so are the costs incurred. Large
corporations have telephone accounts running into millions each month.
Monitoring call statistics has become a necessity rather than a luxury. Managers can monitor the obvious, such as which staff members are making excessive
calls, to establishing marketing trends and identifying problems or bottlenecks that may exist in a company' system.
Traditionally PABX monitoring was done in the following way: a PC would be connected to the serial port of the PABX and a large data file created. This file
may be imported to a management application. Another method was to connect a serial printer to the PABX system resulting in reams of paper. Later innovations
included various intelligent and dumb call logging units (CLU's) that are placed next to the PABX and usually connect to it serially. These devices may or
may not have Ethernet connectivity and would typically download information to a management application supplied by the CLU supplier.
The SAN People solution
SAN People have brought an innovative solution to this problem by their development of the EtherPAD range of thin servers. EtherPAD enables the connection
of any RS232 serial device, such as a PABX, with an Ethernet network. The EtherPAD is programmed with an IP address, Subnet Mask and Gateway Address
compatible with the Ethernet Network it is planned to use the device on.
When the EtherPAD is running, it becomes "transparent" passing data to and from the serial device to the application. The EtherPAD also contains
a Web server. The EtherPAD can thus be remotely fully configured using any commercial Web Browser. Parameters such as Serial Port Configuration, Ethernet
interface and DNS configuration can be easily changed from anywhere in the world.
As a Data logger EtherPAD is hard to beat. The device comes with optional 4,8,12 or 16 MB Flash Ram. The EtherPAD thus connects to the serial port of the
PABX and into the companies LAN. Data from the Logger is saved to memory and can be date and time stamped for convenience. The Logger can be accessed
from anywhere on the LAN or WAN and data downloaded via FTP file transfer. The data file is packaged in such a way as to be easily imported into any
spreadsheet application such as Microsoft Excel. The Logger is also capable of e-mailing the logged data to a pre-programmed Internet e-mail address.
The amount of data saved is selectable by size or time and the Logger is capable of initiating a connection to a remote host or application when the
criteria are met or it will wait passively for an application to connect to it to download the logged PABX data.
The result of this innovation is that calls may be monitored on a national or international basis. As an example a central monitoring application may
connect to any number of EtherPAD Loggers on a WAN and download PABX statistics for a chain of stores. In this way real time management of call
statistics and costs may be implemented with obvious savings in time and money.
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