Thomas Howe

Like most engineers, when I see a technology that seems really easy to implement, I have this urge to dismiss it.  Perhaps it’s the modern tech equivalent of Samuel Johnson’s quote : “What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.” Enter click-to-call.  Six months ago, when I thought of click-to-call, it was all I could do to avoid yawning, for indeed, a click-to-call service is nearly trivial to implement, and with open source software, it is trivial. Now that I am putting the finishing touches on my report, I realize that I’ve moved quite a bit from my original stand.  I didn’t fully understand how compelling the business models are it enables, or what a versatile element it can be for the telecommunications architect. I’ll leave the business model analysis for the report, but let’s look at click-to-call from an architectural perspective.

The simplistic view of this service is that it enables a computer user to initiate a call between his phone and somebody else’s.  But, when viewed from a more abstract viewpoint, the hidden power comes out:

1. Click-to-call allows you to separate the physical address from the logical address.  In other words, it allows you to move from “I want to talk to the sales person Joe” to “I want to talk to a sales person”, and for software to figure out who it should be.  Perhaps Joe is not working today. Maybe Joe isn’t the person the customer talked to last.  Using click to call, you can let software figure out (at the last minute) who you need to talk to, allowing for very interesting use cases.  Even better, this “last minute decision” can be written in any language, and isn’t confined to the difficult implementation world of telephony.
2. Click-to-call takes a synchronous service (making a phone call NOW) and makes it asynchronous – you click it when you want to click it.
3. Click-to-call can add authentication and/or authorization onto a call.  For today’s phone conversations, the only authentication for inbound PSTN calls are what you might do as you look at caller ID, or an IVR that interrupts the call.  With click-to-call, you can add authorization that restricts who and when can make the phone call.
4. Click-to-call carries information that can’t normally be carried in a call.  A really good example of this are click-to-call links on e-commerce pages, where the person who receives the call can also receive complete information about what page the caller clicked from (or where he’s been, or how often he’s called before).
5. Click-to-call adds anonymity to one or both legs of the call. Can you say Match.com?

Well, to the telephony gods, I ask forgiveness.  Sometimes simple is best.