Linux @ Call Center- Part 1 of 2

Linux in call center - Part 1 of 2

I'm the CEO of an Infrastructure Management company Solution Enterprises based out of Pune with core competence in Linux & open source technologies. People usually are skeptical & reluctant to use linux as their operating system of choice. Traditionally linux has been a choice of techies & geeks. But let me assure that it's now an OS of the masses, with lot's of stability, user friendliness, secured & fun.

So here's the case study. I can very confidently say that because the call center i'm talking about is Ace Money. They are a client of ours & are based out of Pune. They are into financial services, basically in 4 wheeler insurance located near FC Road with operations in Pune, soon expanding to Mumbai, Nagpur, Solapur, Sangli etc.

Infrastructure

We started with 10 HCL laptops & 1 server & a wireless router. We have deployed OpenSuse 10.3 on all the laptops & server(named as Server1). The laptops connect to the wireless router with a WPA 2 level security which as of now is really hard to break & considered to be very secure. The wireless router is connected to the main server.

Recently we the team strength was increased & we added 5 more laptops to the existing infrastructure. Now the problem was that we needed to shift people to a different room b'cas of space crunch where the range was less. So we installed another wireless router & connected both the wireless routers.

We are using a Web based application branded as On2Biz, provided by Reach1to1 Technologies of Mumbai for managing our entire data & call schedule etc. We have taken up a hosted solution from them i.e means that our application & data are hosted at their end on their servers for our convenience.

The other requirement being a web application was internet connectivity. So we took internet connection from VSNl 512 kbps & other from Reliance 312 kbps for fail safe. With internet connectivity, there was another issue that the client wanted us to check was restriction of browsing to unwanted sites etc. So we installed & configured transparent Squid proxy servers on the server with maximum restriction, allowing only the required sites. We had put in the Firewall to maximum security so that there will be no unauthorized logins.

Management of the infrastructure is taken care by us remotely. Besides being a proxy server, Server1 also acts like a network gateway & remote login server for administration. Going further my client has suggested that they want to expand the network further & would like to add 15 more stations in the coming months.

Summary of existing infrastructure:
We have 15 laptops & 1 server all running on OpenSuse 10.3, with wireless connectivity using a web based application.

Continued in the next part...........

Arun Tomar
Solution Enterprises
web: http://www.solutionenterprises.co.in