Never heard about Voxeo? Don’t know what they do? Never visited their Web site or looked at their offerings?

Join me for a guided Webtour to learn more about Voxeo.

We want to start our tour at their home www.voxeo.com.  Whenever you get lost during our journey I will pick you up there.

Arrived at voxeo.com? Perfect. To your left, you can see their core offerings:

• IVR platforms and hosting
• VoIP platforms and services
• IVR and VoIP developer programs
• and Voice Applications

Let’s visit those areas now. For those of you that may be interested only in specific areas you may use these shortcuts: Free hosted IVR, free IVR download, free SIP development, IVR platform, SIP platform, voice applications, Voxeo Blogs, Evolution, Contact

For all others, we will drive on to IVR platforms and hosting: Voxeo provides a proven, standards-based IVR software platform. Here are some facts:

• 100% Standards based IVR
• Supports W3C VoiceXML 2.1
• Supports W3C CCXML 1.0
• Supports W3C SRGS 1.0
• Supports W3C SSML 1.0
• Supports CallXML 3.0
• Supports touch-tone and voice entry
• Supports voice recognition and TTS
• Supports T1, E1, ISDN, or VOIP/SIP
• Supports voice authentication

The platform is available as follows:

You can try Voxeo’s IVR solutions at no cost, via the

• hosted Evolution developer portal or the
• free Prophecy IVR Platform download.

Let’s leave the IVR section and proceed to the VoIP platforms and services. The SIP Application Server is built around the world’s most proven Call Control (CCXML) engine.  For those of you new to call control, CTI and CCXML, let me take a short excursion.

CCXML is the industry standard for call control application development, created by the W3C.

CCXML can be used to create call control applications, including: Back to Back SIP User Agents (B2BUA), SIP redirect servers, SIP load balancers, Virtual or “hosted” IP PBX and call-center / ACD solutions, click-to-dial SIP call launchers, find-me-follow-me applications, and more.

When combined with the Prophecy SIP Media Server, CCXML can also be used to deliver speech-driven conferencing, call recording platforms, emergency notification / audio broadcast services, auto attendant applications, telephone surveys, unified messaging platforms, bill payment solutions, voice broadcasting services, and general speech or touch-tone driven IVR.

To learn more, Voxeo’s Prophecy SIP Application Server pages are a good place to visit.

Still roaming around? Got enough theory? Simply use the free Evolution Developer portal to build your own IVR or VoIP applications. If you haven’t built telephony apps before, visit the hosted Evolution Developer portal. If you have built apps before, or if you really need a local, downloadable VoiceXML / CCXML platform, you may also try the freely downloadable Prophecy Platform.

You don’t want to build an application on your own? Fine. In this case you may look at the ready-to-go, industry-focused IVR applications:

• General Enterprise IVR
• Call Center IVR
• Government Offices & Agencies
• Banks & Financial Services
• Utilities
• Healthcare
• Retail Sales
• Travel & Transportation
• Systems Integrators
• Telephony VARs

We have already arrived at the end of our short tour. I hope you enjoyed the tour and I hope to see you again soon.

Cheers!
Michael

My insider tip for you: The Voxeo blog provides interesting readings on standardisation, emerging technology, Voxeo labs and application development.

Here are some additional readings on the acquisition:

• The official press release announcing the acquisition
  
• Article in Information Week
• Article in SpeechTech Mag

Here are some of Voxeo’s viewpoints:

• What the VoiceObjects acquisition by Voxeo means for voice application developers… on the Voxeo Developer’s Corner blog
• Voxeo’s VoiceObjects acquisition further promotes the open standard of VoiceXML on the Voxeo Speaking of Standards blog
• Emerging Tech Talk #010 – Voxeo acquires VoiceObjects and brings developers new voice application tools on the Voxeo Emerging Tech Talk video podcast

As you are probably aware by now, VoiceObjects got acquired by Voxeo.

During the past years, we have been able to create a software platform for self-service application development and analytics that is unique in the market. Many corporations world wide use VoiceObjects technology to successfully operate their phone self-services.

As Voxeo, we are now able to provide the complete technology stack to efficiently implement and operate self-services, including IVR and speech technology. And the best of all, Voxeo’s hosting offering enables you to develop and operate phone services without the need to build up and maintain your own infrastructure.

You are using an alternative IVR? Don’t be afraid. We will continue our strategy to provide an IVR-independent application development platform. More precisely, we will continue maintenance and will further extend our Media Platform Drivers to support all media platforms and new platform versions.

To learn more about what this acquisition means and what is next for the software, listen to this interview with Michael Codini, co-founder and CTO of VoiceObjects, hold by Dan York, Director Emerging Communication Technology, Voxeo.

You can download or play the podcast here:

[8:36m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Or you can watch on YouTube at:

Last week VoiceDays 2008 – the leading German speech technology event – took place. From the VoiceObjects perspective we are looking back to a really successful event. Numerous discussions indicate the growing demand for application development environments that provide independence of underlying IVR technology, that can handle multiple phone channels and modalities, and that provide powerful analytics.

During these two days participants of congress and tradeshow could attend numerous presentations; I want to share the VoiceObjects-related (primary German) presentations with you.

Three presentations were given by VoiceObjects customers, providing good insight into their experience with application development and deployment of automated self-services:

Daniel Hendling, T-Mobile International: Die integrierte Voice & Mobile Self-Service Strategie bei T-Mobile International

Marion Libossek, Telefónica o2 Germany: Der steinige Weg zum sexy Voice Portal

Christian Rosenberger, Swisscom: Das Swisscom-Sprachportal

My colleagues gave two presentations on multi-channel self-services:

Michael Codini, VoiceObjects: Die neue mobile Generation – Selfservice-Anforderungen in der Multichannel Kommunikation

Dr. Andreas Volmer, Multi-Channel Phone Services With VoiceObjects Server

And finally, I gave a presentation on analytics during the Demo-Forum session:

Michael Gill, Analyse- und Tuning-Tools: VoiceObjects Analyzer

Dear VoiceObjects developers,

We recently updated the Developer Portal with some new product updates. Check out the update below:

• Now available: VoiceObjects Media Mixer Developer Edition
  VoiceObjects Media Mixer is now available as free Developer Edition. VoiceObjects Media Mixer enables the delivery of innovative video solutions via the creation and dynamic generation of video applications for 3G phones. This optional component to the VoiceObjects Server mixes multiple content types — such as text, images, HTML, audio and video files — and generates video clips in 3gp or Flash video (flv) format.
  http://developers.voiceobjects.com/support-training/media-mixer/

  
  

• New version of VoiceObjects Developer Edition
  Version 7.3 R2 is now available for download, providing a newly designed Test Monitor, an enhanced Storyboard Manager, and several minor enhancements and bug fixes. Users of previous versions of the Developer Edition may use the “Check for Update” from the Developer Edition’s VoiceObjects menu to check for the latest version and to access the provided update package.
  http://developers.voiceobjects.com/downloads/deveditiondownload/

  
  

• Prime Telecom
  To learn more about using VoiceObjects for multiple phone channels try the newly available demo application Prime Telecom. Prime Telecom implements a sample self-service portal for a telecommunication company, supporting three phone channels (voice, text, and Web) in three different languages (US-English, UK-English, and German).
  Additional demos and templates will be published soon.
  http://developers.voiceobjects.com/support-training/developer-edition/demos-templates/

  
  

Please note also our next Jam Session on “Natural Dialog Management – Adding NLU and Other Advanced Speech Processing Features to Traditional Voice & DTMF Dialogs” on November 5, 2008. Free registration at http://developers.voiceobjects.com/tech-topics/monthly-jam-sessions/

Best regards,

Michael

Welcome to the VoiceObjects Developer Blog. The VoiceObjects team is very excited about this new communication channel as this will enrich our growing developer community by sharing thoughts and experiences on various topics.

This weblog will focus on best practices for self-service application design, VUI / GUI design, analytics and reporting, and speech grammar development. Also we are going to cover new market and technology trends and how those impact the VoiceObjects product roadmap. Specifically on developments in the W3C standard bodies around VoiceXML. But also on emerging phone self-service channels such as Video, SMS, USSD, Web Chat and Instant Messaging. And finally we want to report about successful project and solution deployments with our SI partners and customers.

Here are the VoiceObjects team members who  will participate as authors in the Developer Blog:

Andreas Volmer – Presales Manager EMEA
Angelika Salmen – Manager VUI Services
Christopher Schick – Program Manager
Martin Mauelshagen – Program Manager
Michael Codini – CTO
Michael Gill – Director Product Management
Stefan Besling – VP Engineering
Tobias Göbel – Senior Presales Consultant
Volker Kraft – Manager Education Services

If you would like to stay  up-to-date  on what we are doing, please do subscribe to our site’s feed – and please do pass along your comments.  We’d love to hear from you.

The VoiceObjects team