In the crowded IVR Tools market and competing technologies for making IVR development easier and faster, I thought it would be an worthwhile to know how many people use what kind of IVR development tools for their IVR Software.

POLL to find out % of IVR Tools users

So, I though I would start a poll in this IVR Blog to find out how many uses what kind of IVR development tools. Though I tried to add as many as possible tools, I may have forgotten to add some. Please leave comment with the IVR Tool and I would update the options.

The poll is at the right side this blog just below the SEARCH Textbox. I request all kindly to vote. Once may choose 2 or more choices.

I hope to publish the result after a month or so with country wise data too.

Happy voting!

Aculab, one of the leading CTI manufacturers in the world, too joined “Voice in Cloud” a year back and recently it has come out with new version too. I had a chance to speak to Faye McClenahan, Head of Strategic Marketing, Aculab about AculabCloud and how it is different from its peers!

AculabCloud: Complete Telephony Application in Cloud

While normal Cloud IVR providers tend to provide ‘voice to web applications’, AculabCloud promises to allow users to develop and deploy complete Telephony Applications rapidly using high level languages! Presently it supports Python and Microsoft .NET Technologies like C# etc. A complete telephony applications on cloud seems to be first of its kind from a CTI manufacturers.

Cloud Telephony does not require any explanation now a days as Cloud seems t be the buzz word in any branch of computing world! The Cloud Telephony by Aculab has some uniqueness as follows :-

1. It comes from Computer Telephony background of more than 30 years
Most of the Cloud Telephony providers till now were either have background of web services or IVR Rad tool providers. AculabCloud is by Aculab who has more than 30 years experience in manufacturing CTI boards and more than 20 years in HMP ( Host Media Processing) Software development. So, one can expect the its system to be more robust, reliable and faster.

2. It aims to telephony solutions, not merely voice extension

While many Cloud Telephony providers aims to provide a Voice Extension ( or voice interactivity) to any computer application, AcuabCloud aims to provide developers to build a complete Telephony Applications and pay as per its usage! According to me, this is a big difference from other Cloud Telephony Solutions.

3. Data Security

One of the major considerations while opting for cloud telephony is data security and protection. AculabCloud has architectures in such a way where sensitive data can be kept at users premise.

AculabCloud has now more than 200 registered developers globally and has many telephony applications developed which has made more than 2millions call.

It has two servers in Europe and USA and has tied up with many Telecom Service providers across countries to provide DID numbers locally.

For more about AculabCloud, one may visit to AculabCloud page here.

In the beginning of the year 2011, I had predicted about some IVR technologies as well as IVR applications which are likely to see high usage, on looking back, except speaker recognition, I can feel reasonably satisfied about the result of the predictions.

Among others, hosted IVR and bulk voice calling has almost gone mainstream now even in India. IVVR has been making steady progress with top VAS ( value added service) players in India creating application and content for it. Though 3G penetration has not made any spectacular progress!

As for usage of IVR in payment gateways, it is definitely getting wider acceptance as well as becoming more and more trusted method of charging one’s credit card!

I have not found any substantial acceptance of speech recognition in IVR applications in India, though in other countries speech recognition has become quite common.

Speaker Recognition is another technology which has failed to make much of a buzz in year 2011. But I am still hopeful of this technology.

So, for 2012, here are my predictions:-

1. RAD tools – IVR Toolkit
Rapid application development tools are gaining popularity as well as acceptance among many developers. Almost all serious IVR companies now a days have their own RAD tool for designing IVR call flow.

2. Web enabled IVR

Year 2012 should see many improvements on Web Enabled IVR designing tool. Hosted IVR provider would design and develop easy to use web based IVR call flow designer.

3. IVVR

I think, this year IVVR should find many deployments as well as usage. Hopefully, India would be able to provide low cost 3G connections which may propel consumption of video contents.

4. Wider acceptance of Open source IVR

I think, open source IVR would gain more popularity this year. With increasing acceptance of hosted IVR, the competition would be more intense and open source IVR would be advantageous.

These are all I can think of right now. Please share your predictions too!

Today on 23rd August, ivrsworld.com has turned two years old!

I would like to thank all readers and their valuable comments on this blog. When I started writing this blog two years back, I simply wanted to keep posting about information about IVR that I Google in internet, various IVR related news, my personal experiences with various IVR projects. But I think it has now become a blog about IVR!

IVR Visitor

The turning point came somewhere December 2009, when this blog had started getting more than 100 unique visitors per day and I thought I should take it seriously ( presently, the latest figures in Google analytic shows 4400 unique visitors a month, majorly from India, USA, Canada and Europe). It felt good when this blog is shows up at first page in Google while searching for many IVR related keywords! The registered readers ( Google Feedburner) of the blog has reached 100 with email IDs ending with dialogic.com, sangoma.com, pronexus.com, invox.com, aculab.com to name few! These were surely inspiring!

Then VBVoice, IVR toolkit for .NET developers came as sponsor which was moral booster! Otherwise I was majorly using Google Adsense to display graphics, not to earn anything!

Then MessageTech, the hosted IVR Service provider has come to sponsor and I even could afford a paid WordPress Theme for the blog.

I thank you all the sponsors for sponsoring this IVR blog which were really helpful and inspiring. I hope to have one more sponsor this year so that I could host www.ivrsworld.com on VPS/dedicated server with minimum down time . Presently it is on a shared hosting and I have been embarrassed few times when readers mailed me to inform they were not able to open the site.

I thought I would prepare a PDF book in the second year, unfortunately I could not not achieve that, but this year, I will again try to achieve that. Other wise, I think, ivrsworld.com has had a good year!

This year, I would test more CTI boards, IVR RAD tools and post my experience here. And at the end of year, I would like to prepare a comparison chart using some common parameters.

There are many disadvantages of using analog CTI ( Computer Telephony Integration) cards. Apart from that, digital CTI boards offer many advantages over analog CTI boards and I would like to list three main reasons why one should upgrade to digital CTI boards from analog ones.

Even in India, E1 connectivity or PRI lines are easily available from any telecom service provider and it is much cheaper. And with, many new CTI manufacturers are offering high quality digital CTI boards which are easily available.

Here are three reasons :-

1. Dialed Number Identification ( DNI Facility)
Digital boards provide DNI ( dialed Number Identification) which is not available in analog CTI boards. DNI can be very useful. It provides options for separate CTI applications depending on the DNI detected. The same interactive voice response application could play different welcome prompts as per DNI. For example:- A digital interface with Telephone exchange may offer 30 different numbers, and one common number for all 30 lines. Now depending on caller dialing one or groups of numbers, a separate greetings, separate call flow can be implemented in the same CTI application. There would be flexibility to change, modify these numbers without having to change any physical lines.
DNI can also be used for shortcut in menu options. For example, there are 4 kinds of complaints in a company. Four separate numbers could be used for each of the complaints saving callers time to choose a complaint through menu. This can greatly increase usability of any interactive voice response system application.

2. Quick connections
Digital CTI boards uses digital protocol for quick call setup and quick information exchanges. So, any call can be connected quickly. But n analog, it order to CTI boards, one has to wait two rings before the call can be connected. Many of the times, analog CTI boards may not detect CLI at all. Any irate customer gets more irritated when her call is connected after 2/3 rings. It also saves time and handle more calls. So the throughput of digital boards is more than analog CTI boards.

3. Disconnect Problems
Analog CTI boards need to train on varius disconnect tones which may vary from one PABX to another. It takes time to setup detection of these various tones like Busy Tone, Engage Tone, Disconnect Tone, Dial Tone. Also, it takes some minimum time to detect any of these tones. So, analog CTI boards take time to dial out, disconnect.
During outbound calls, it is not easy to detect if called number has picked the call or not. Many people use here voice activity detection as ring back tone does not work with accuracy. With digital CTI boards, all these problems are removed. This not only saves time, but it increases efficiency, result in more number calls.

There is one benefit of having analog lines. out of many analog lines, if one cable is cut, remaining lines will work, in digital, it is only one wire, so one cable is cut, whole of your lines or at least minimum 30 ports would go down.

So, if you are still using analog CTI board, consider upgrading to digital CTI boards now!

Without doubt, interactive voice response (IVR) has become the ubiquitous technology in telecommunications applications. IVR solutions have a myriad of uses that are mostly taken for granted, however, the essence of an IVR system is its ability to offer ‘self-service’ for the user, thus it can help to reduce cost and improve the customer experience.

Since introducing the world’s first ‘all-in-one’ voice board in 1998, Aculab has been setting the standard of enabling technology components – e.g., CTI cards – for IVR applications. Whatever your needs for advanced IVR functionality, Aculab has the media processing technology and APIs – voice, fax, call progress, etc. – to drive your success.

Beneficially, Aculab is able to offer a choice; from its range of IP-centric, DSP-based Prosody X boards to its host-based (SoftDSP or HMP) option, Prosody S. And you can use Prosody X for converged or mixed IP/TDM environments, where you still need E1 or T1 PSTN connectivity.

Additionally, Aculab\’s VoiceXML/CCXML interpreter set offers a powerful and scalable design option for platform vendors and service providers alike. It is the fastest, most cost-effective, high performance solution available today, which is an effective combination in any language.

IVR system features and capacities vary depending on the market segments they target. Small to medium enterprises (SMEs) may look to enhance their IP-PBX with an IVR-based auto-attendant using Prosody S, while larger companies will require a Prosody X board-based solution for a hybrid contact centre or voice portal, perhaps also using automatic speech recognition (ASR) and text-to-speech (TTS). Carriers and service providers need IVR to provide a wide range of subscriber messaging and large scale, hosted or VAS and mobile VAS service offerings. And, undoubtedly, TEMs (of all descriptions; Tier 1, Tier 2, etc.) and platform vendors supplying these user communities will also benefit from Aculab’s board and software options.

Check out Aculab at http://www.aculab.com/solutions/IVR-solutions.asp