Collaborative multimedia middleware architecture and advanced Internet call center

We describe a concept of Internet multimedia call center and discuss a collaborative multimedia middleware architecture supporting the call center. The collaborative multimedia middleware is composed of basic real-time service components for teleconferencing, screen sharing, collaborative browsing, and telepresentation so that a variety of application services can be built on it in an easy and interoperable manner. The multimedia call center as a typical application of such middleware enables Web users to communicate with any customer support agent in a Web-based shopping mall. In this paper we describe the details of the Internet multimedia call center scenario and models, and propose middleware architectures of which components composed of proprietary protocols for collaborative browsing, as well as conforms H.323 and T.120 ITU-T recommendations and SMIL W3C standard.