HOME WORKPLACE TECHNOLOGY BACKGROUNDER A Difficult Product Development Challenge

A Difficult Product Development Challenge

As historical circumstance would have it, there were several product families which where telephone-oriented and all of which attempted to overcome the LSO barrier. However, none of them was particularly successful. The following paragraphs provide a synopsis of each.

Canada's Mitel Corporation introduced a line of telephony based workstations, called KONTACT, late in 1983. These products offered built-in workplace automation features such as telephone directory, telephone dialing, telephone conferencing, word processing, electronic mail (E-mail), calendar/schedule and others, as well as what may have been the world's first soft-key end-user interface. More significantly, Kontacts could send un-hosted point-to-point E-mail directly to each other - with no intermediary server - and could also access larger DEC or IBM systems as terminals. Therefore, a workgroup could use Kontact, together with a minicomputer, to decentralize intelligently, with most worker-to-worker traffic NOT forced to move through the central hub. Thus, when combined with contemporary workgroup systems, such as the DEC MicroVAX II, Kontact formed a perfect basis for a telecommuting or decentralized workgroup. However, despite significant expenditures on the product (and proven application in the home workplace), its non-DOS operating system, and insufficiently well developed national distribution channels, combined to force its early demise in 1985.

The ROLM Corporation developed a product generally similar to Kontact which integrated desktop telephony control, Private Branch Exchange (PBX) access and local computing. However the product was dependent, at least in part, on the proprietary ROLM CBX voice/data switch product line. Although ROLM was substantially acquired by IBM, further development of this product line, on a commercially viable basis did not occur.

During the 1980's Canada's Northern Telecom (NT) introduced a line of telephone switch dependent desktop workstations with integrated workplace automation and telecommunications capabilities. Unfortunately, these products have not achieved widespread market penetration or acceptance.

During the late 1980's, the Montebello California based KOWIN Company introduced its line of intelligent and semi-intelligent integrated telephony workstations. In one way, these were a conceptual re-incarnation of the Kontact, however they used the industry standard UNIX System V operating system and Motorola 68000 technology. As a home workstation, the Kowin offered all of the advantages of Kontact, plus the fact that the professional (or para-professional) system administrator of a UNIX-based central mid-range system could gain remote access to the Kowin and administer it on behalf of the end-user, freeing the latter form this sometimes complex task. This product failed to achieve any significant market penetration.

Norlite, a Mitel spinoff firm, developed a very powerful UNIX-based CTI server aimed at the mid-tier call center market, but which had natural applicability to the HWP market as a 'decentralization server' . Despite Norlite's early success, its U.S. owner placed the firm up for sale and - finding no buyer - shut it down in 1985.

Texas-based Connectware developed an excellent groupware product, called Cruiser, long before the groupware term was in vogue and offered it together with single-line CTI boards (and planned dual-line boards). WTC agreed to serve as Master VAR of this product in Canada and California, but upon introducing ISDN boards Connectware decided to terminate its analog CTI board production which led to the demise of both Cruiser and ultimately the company, which was shut down by its parent (AMP). We strenuously argued against dropping the analog boards and had already signed partner firms to sell decentralization as a package using this technology, but Connectware would not listen.

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