Patent ID: 7606909

Claim:
A business contact center for interfacing customers with a business, and the business contact center comprising: a plurality of media handlers each media handler including a respective dedicated control interface and each of the plurality of media handlers configurable via the control interface to define a plurality of media services to service a customer contact received at the business contact center including at least one of routing media between selected media endpoints, recording media from a selectable media source, and playing selectable media to a selected media endpoint; a conference controller coupled with each of the plurality of media handlers via the corresponding control interface, and the conference controller responsive to a customer contact to configure via the corresponding control interface an available one of the plurality of media handlers to define selected ones of the media services, media sources and media endpoints for handling the customer contact and to maintain a customer session under ongoing control of the conference controller through exchange of session control packets to present multiple media services to the customer, the controller including a bandwidth manager which estimates a bandwidth requirement of the customer contact in response to the customer contact and selects an available one of the media handlers based upon a lowest media handler bandwidth load.