CTI Group Breaks Hosted Call Recording Performance Records with SmartRecord IP, Adding advanced Call Recording functionality to the IBM BladeCenter.

BLACKBURN, UK - FEBRUARY 16, 2009 CTI Group, a leading provider of ebilling, bill analysis, VoIP call recording and call management applications, announced today it had achieved new industry heights using their SmartRecord IP on the IBM BladeCenter. Combined for the first time in recent testing the IBM hardware and SmartRecord IP delivered a superior standard of call recording, whilst at a lower cost of ownership for telecom customers.

Recent performance testing at IBM’s Montpellier, France facility, SmartRecord IP was tested on a set of IBM blades with a BroadSoft BroadWorks softswitch. With its unique recording methodology and utilising the BroadWorks Lawful Intercept interface, the recorder was benchmarked with 316,000 calls, representing 380,000 minutes of recorded calls with an average CPU utilisation of 15 percent and a peak utilisation of 25 percent. The performance benchmarks demonstrated a 50 percent performance advantage over previous benchmark results.

SmartRecord IP provides a reliable, high performance and affordable carrier-grade, hosted call recording platform. This meets the most rigid demands of many Tier 1 telecommunications service providers and their complex networks.

As a carrier-grade call recording platform, the CTI SmartRecord IP uses unique patent pending technology, coupled with white-label support for multiple channel partners and tenants, to make hosted call recording a reliable and efficient value-added product for hosted VoIP suppliers.

The IBM BladeCenter system is the ideal solution for deployment of converged services over a single integrated platform. It includes systems designed specifically for the telecom industry that are NEBS3 / ETSI compliant. IBM BladeCenter is an advanced blade system that integrates servers, storage and networking into a single chassis.

Andy Wilson, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at CTI Group comments: “The IBM BladeCenter provides CTI Group with a perfect blend of cost-effective resilience and scalability. It provides SmartRecord IP’s modular architecture with affordable scalability for system upgrades, reduced footprint in racks, lower power consumption and easier additional recording server integration.”

In addition, the CTI Group is now a recognised IBM Industry Solutions Reseller (ISR), thereby simplifying the delivery for its SmartRecord IP solution on the IBM family of products. SmartRecord IP The CTI SmartRecord IP delivers several key benefits:

• It allows Service Providers to offer call recording to their channel partners and end clients within a single, centralised, call recording system, reducing Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

• Patent-pending technology that eliminates network engineering to guarantee capture of all calls, again lowering TCO.

• Selective recording that reduces network utilisation.

• High levels of security, enabling calls to be encrypted and recognised as tamper-proof for use as legally admissible evidence.

• High security ensures compliance with national and international regulatory requirements, particularly those imposed and further proposed by Financial Services Regulators around the world, such as FSA & MiFID Regulations in the European Union.

• Future regulatory legislation is expected to require more evidence to support commercial and financial activities. Customers are demanding call recording to satisfy these new requirements.

CTI Group chose to work with IBM products because of their broad portfolio of blade offerings, including:

• BladeCenter S for small firms and branch office environments,

• BladeCenter E and BladeCenter H for enterprise data centre deployments and,

• BladeCenter T and BladeCenter HT for robust, telecom central office deployments with NEBS3 / ETSI requirements.

Using a common architecture across the BladeCenter family allowed CTI Group to mix and match offerings to suit their specific needs. For more information about CTI Group’s implementation of SmartRecord IP on the IBM BladeCenter, visit www.ctigroupuk.com.