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Info Directions' (Victor, NY - 716-9244110) Win NT-based CostGuard 2.0 is due out 1Q99. They were able to give me a pcAnywhere demo from their headquarters near Rochester. (Why don't more developers use this handy remote-control tool for us media types?)
They admit that the package is not for the VolP-only telco. For one thing, the system is not truly real time. But it's close; again, the emphasis is on convergence of multiple services. Also open systems:
"We're riding the Microsoft Power Train," says Jim Lazeroff, IDI's marketing director. The core rating and billing engine is written in C++. The front end is Access 97 and Visual Basic.
They do maintain, however, that call detail records of the IP variety can and do go into their rating and billing and invoicing engine. CostGuard can also take billing information from pre-paid...