Global Crossing is providing its suite of SIP Trunking services to Clarity Consulting for its hosted contact center management product. Global Crossing's SIP Trunking services enable Clarity Consulting and its partners to deliver a new customer service center software solution that enhances the call control functions of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Release 2 for enterprises worldwide. Global Crossing was one of the first SIP trunking service providers qualified with Office Communications Server 2007 R2.

Clarity Consulting is using Global Crossing's SIP Trunking solution to deliver its hosted contact center solution called Clarity Connect, a new software and services solution based on the Microsoft unified communications platform. Clarity Connect allows businesses with small to medium sized contact centers differentiate their brand from larger, more sophisticated customer service centers by enabling them to deliver feature-rich customer service experiences at a fraction of the cost and complexity of traditional offerings.

With Global Crossing's SIP Trunking solution, Clarity Consulting routes calls from customers to agents using the native support for Federation in OCS. Calls are delivered to the Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2 client on the agent's desktop over MPLS circuits provided by Global Crossing. Agents can then perform sophisticated call control actions using the Clarity Connect Agent Console, a Microsoft Silverlight powered application that is embedded within Office Communicator 2007 R2 when a call is received.

Through Global Crossing's SIP Trunking and Office Communications R2 solutions, Clarity Consulting can offer a hosted customer interaction management platform for its customers, such as Emerson Ecologics, a nutritional supplements company.

SIP Trunking is the interconnection standard for VoIP calling applications, serving as an alternative to circuit-based fixed lines on the public switched telephone network. SIP Trunking can offer enterprise customers significant cost-savings from the elimination of gateways, costly ISDN facilities, and the maximization of bandwidth utilization in a converged IP environment.

Global Crossing's SIP Trunking suite of VoIP services supporting Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 include:

• Global Crossing VoIP On-Net Plus
• Global Crossing VoIP Outbound (which processes traditional long distance and international long distance);
• Global Crossing VoIP Toll-Free;
• Global Crossing VoIP Local Service; and
• Global Crossing VoIP Consulting (an offering that is a combination of advanced interoperability testing and customized VoIP engineering consulting services).

Global Crossing defines Unified Communications as the integration of collaboration and IP telephony services, delivered via a converged audio, data and video IP network. Through this fully-meshed MPLS-based global network, Global Crossing delivers customers the ability to deploy enhanced communications tools that enable the effective exchange of information while raising user productivity levels.