Voxeo Talks

We are very pleased to announce today that Dan Burnett, Voxeo’s Director of Speech Technologies, has joined the VoiceXML Forum Board of Directors. The VoiceXML Forum issued a news release today announcing Dan’s new role.

Dan Burnett’s passion about VoiceXML and related technologies is no secret to anyone in the industry. He currently serves as the co-editor-in-chief of the VoiceXML 3.0 specification and is actually the chair of the W3C’s Voice Browser Working Group, the group under which speech-related standards fall including VoiceXML, CCXML, SCXML and so many more.

Dan has in fact been involved with many of those standards, serving as:

• co-chair of the HTML Speech Incubator Group
• chief editor of Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) versions 1.0 and 1.1;
• editor of VoiceXML 2.0, 2.1, and 3.0;
• editor of Media Resource Control Protocol(MRCP) v2;
• an author of the Extensible Multi-Modal Annotation (EMMA) specification, Pronunciation Lexicon Specification (PLS), and State Chart XML (SCXML); and
• a contributor to the Speech Recognition Grammar Specification (SRGS), Semantic Interpretation for Speech Recognition(SISR) and the multimodal framework documents of the Multimodal Interaction Working Group.

Basically, if there has been a W3C standard involved with speech or voice, odds are pretty good that Dan has been involved in some form.

Within Voxeo, Dan has overall responsibility for all of Voxeo’s speech recognition products and research. He leads the research, development and implementation of the company’s own speech recognition and text-to-speech products, and also integrates technology from leading speech recognition providers. He is also our point person on industry standards, not only with the W3C but also with the IETF. (You can read the posts I’ve written about Dan’s standards work on our Speaking of Standards blog.)

As part of the VoiceXML Forum Board of Directors, Dan is looking forward to joining with the other board members in increasing awareness within the broader industry around what VoiceXML can do and also in expanding the certification efforts offered by the VoiceXML Forum.

We’re thrilled that Dan will be on the board and look forward to being part of the next stage of evolution of the VoiceXML Forum!

Are you looking for a free IVR platform to use on MacOS X or Linux? Would you like to build applications with open standards like VoiceXML, CCXML and SIP? Are you tired of all the solutions out there that require you to do all your development on Microsoft Windows?

Here at Voxeo we believe in Unlocked Communications™ and believe that you should NOT be locked in at any level – including the operating system!

That’s why we make our Prophecy platform available for all three major operating systems at:

www.voxeo.com/prophecy

And of course, Prophecy is free to download and use.[1]

Sure, the majority of our downloads reflect the market and are for Windows, but we use all three operating systems internally and have large customer deployments on all of them.

The best part of all of this?

Prophecy is the same on all three platforms.

And your apps are naturally movable between versions… so if your servers are all Windows or Linux but your developers all want to use shiny Mac laptops, they can install Prophecy locally on MacOS X and build all the apps they want. When it comes time to deploy, those apps can be moved over to your Windows or Linux server. Same platform, same tools, same code.

Unlocked from the operating system!

If you are interested in learning more, just head on over to our Prophecy download page and try out a version for yourself! Heck, it’s free, so feel free to download it onto several different systems and figure out which version you like best!

P.S. And just remember, the Linux version is the one that we showed CEO Jonathan Taylor demoing that runs over 5,000 simultaneous connections!

[1] The free version of Prophecy includes a license for 2 ports of simultaneous use. It’s the exact same code as the commercial version, though, so if you want more ports you simply have to contact us to buy a license for more.

Now that VoiceXML 2 is the standard language for building voice apps, what’s next?

In this developer jam session, Dan Burnett will present what’s new in VoiceXML 3.

Frustrated by the FIA? Concerned about forward compatibility? Join us for this jam session on May 20, 2010 and learn how the Voice Browser Working Group is addressing these and other key questions.

Date: Thursday, May 20, 2010

Time: 11:00 AM Eastern, 8:00 AM Western, 5:00 PM Central European

REGISTER NOW

It’s a story that’s familiar to too many. A company buys a “standards-based” IVR solution only to find themselves shackled by inflexibility, paying for difficult integrations, piecing together technologies, and waiting for promised functionality to be delivered. Worse, they bought a “standards-based” IVR and found themselves locked in. 

If you’re looking for a new or replacement IVR in 2010 and value the true meaning of open standards and portability, be sure to ask these questions:

Does the vendor use proprietary, non-standard XML and/or proprietary features that will lock you in?

Are proprietary development tools being used to lock you in?

Does the platform support more than one speech engine?

Does the platform provide a consistent offering across multiple regions of the world?

Does the vendor offer the flexibility of a hosted or on-premise solution, with the ability to easily migrate from one to the other or use a combination of the two?

Does the platform only support legacy TDM telephony?

—Does the application platform only support voice self-service?

Many vendors are using proprietary features and application development tools to create a new era of IVR lock-in.  At Voxeo, we choose to keep our customers by providing them with a better product and better support – never by locking them in. Our solutions are designed to ease application development, assure interoperability, facilitate innovation, and destroy vendor lock-in.

• Voxeo Prophecy remains the only platform to pass 100% of the VoiceXML Forum compliance test suite. Additionally, we offer the world’s most deployed and proven CCMXL engine, and deliver a scalable SIP server foundation that is compliant with over 30 Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) SIP standards.

• The same platform behind our global IVR hosting – the largest worldwide VoiceXML and CCXML hosting solution – is offered for on-premise deployment. Customers are free to use a combination of deployment models or move between platforms should requirements change. 

• Voxeo provides a consistent global solution with support for multi-lingual applications and multiple speech engines.

• With Voxeo, you own your application and are free to deploy it on non-Voxeo platforms for any reason, at any time. Voxeo Prophecy features compatibility modes that make porting VoiceXML IVR applications as easy as changing a single Prophecy setting.

• Voxeo’s VoiceObjects service creation, management, and analytics platform enables customers to build applications once and deploy them on over 30 different VoiceXML platforms.

• Prophecy works with SIP platforms and services from AT&T, Avaya, Cisco, Digium/Asterisk, Global Crossing, Nortel, Verizon, and over 40 other companies. This foundation bridges diverse SIP services and devices, eases integration with IP-PBX and call center investments, and lowers the cost of connecting and transferring calls with direct IP connectivity.

• Voxeo enables customers to leverage their IVR investments, application code, and business logic to deliver self-service via additional channels, such as SMS, IM, the mobile web, and even social networking sites like Twitter.

If you’re planning to look at IVR solutions in 2010, be sure to take a look at Voxeo. We’d love to talk. Also, you can instantly get started with any of our solutions for free. We even provide free 24/7 developer support.

Today we are pleased to announce that Voxeo has acquired Motorola’s VoiceXML browser business, including full and exclusive rights to Motorola’s VoxGateway VoiceXML browser. Additionally, all existing OEM customers of Motorola’s VoiceXML browser are now Voxeo customers. As we’ve been talking about this announcement, we came up with the following answers to questions we’re being asked. If you have additional questions, please feel free to email me.

What is a “VoiceXML browser”?

A VoiceXML browser is the software you connect to when you call into a voice application. It is the interface between you as the caller and the automated application you are calling. If you think of a web browser on your computer, the interaction looks like this:

The web browser requests files from a web server and then presents them to you visually in the web browser window. A VoiceXML browser looks quite similar:

The main difference is obviously that the information retrieved is presented back to you as audio over your phone instead of visually on your computer screen. Here is a picture that shows the interaction in our hosted platform for an inbound call:

The voice browser is the software interacting with the caller.

What is special about Motorola’s VoiceXML browser?

Motorola had one of the very first commercial deployments of a VoiceXML browser back 10 years ago when VoiceXML first came out. The product, called “VoxGateway”, is one of the most widely used VoiceXML browsers with many companies licensing it. It is extremely modular and flexible for companies seeking to integrate it into existing products and is extremely standards-compliant. Some of the largest voicemail deployments in the world are built on VoxGateway.

What is the relationship between Motorola and Voxeo?

Voxeo was an early licensee of the VoxGateway software back in 2002. Once we had the source code, we began to build additional modules on top of the VoxGateway base. For instance, we added a module that used MRCP to interact with other speech engines and added a SIP module that let our Prophecy VoiceXML browser interact with VoIP systems. Today our Prophecy VoiceXML browser is an advanced… really supercharged VoiceXML browser built on the basic VoxGateway foundation.

In 2004, Voxeo entered into a partnership with Motorola where Voxeo took on responsibility for development of the basic VoxGateway product. Motorola still sold, licensed and supported the product, but Voxeo provided the development. Separately, Voxeo continued development of our advanced Prophecy VoiceXML browser. Along the way, we went to great lengths to ensure that Prophecy was the most VoiceXML-compliant browser on the market, passing all of the standard and optional VoiceXML compliance tests.

Today, we are announcing that Voxeo has acquired the complete VoxGateway business from Motorola, including all source code. We’ve licensed the software back to Motorola for their usage. The agreement also includes cross-licensing of related Voxeo and Motorola patents.

What does this mean for Motorola’s OEM customers?

Voxeo will be fully supporting all of the Motorola customers who have OEM’d the Motorola VXML browser. We will be continuing to maintain and develop the VoxGateway browser. The win for those OEM customers is that they can, if they choose, license the advanced modules we developed directly from Voxeo to get the added functionality.

What does this mean for Voxeo’s existing customers?

No immediate change, given that they are already using our advanced Prophecy VoiceXML browser. However, this strengthens our technology platform and gives us more options for the future.

Will Voxeo now be licensing the VoiceXML browser to other companies?

Definitely. For many years Voxeo has been licensing its technology to many of the other vendors in the industry. Our CCXML browser is the most widely licensed CCXML engine in the industry and is deployed in the networks of many of the vendors offering CCXML. Our speech engines (ASR and TTS) have been licensed out to other companies. In fact, our Evolution developer portal has been licensed and rebranded by companies seeking their own developer portal.

Now, with the full source code, we can license out to customers not only the basic VoxGateway browser but our full advanced Prophecy VoiceXML browser. As companies are increasingly looking to add VoiceXML functionality to existing products and services, we can now help them add VoiceXML without having to develop it all themselves.

Will Voxeo be enhancing the VoiceXML browser now that it owns it?

Certainly. The W3C is working on VoiceXML 3 now (and Voxeo’s Dan Burnett is actually co-chair of that effort), so you can expect to see us add that support as the standard matures. We have a lot of other ideas, too, so stay tuned…