I keep getting feedback/inquiries from various people asking about prices of CT(Computer Telephony) boards in India. Many people seem to quite puzzled to learn huge price ranges for similar boards with similar basic functionality. For example, depending on the manufacturer, one entry level model of one PRI ( E1) with 30 channels may cost anywhere between Rs. 10,000/- to Rs. 180,000/-.

Here is a price comparison :

CTI Board Street Prices in India

Though, I am unable to list prices of some other vendors here as well as CT boards with various capacities/configurations, but I hope the above list would be quite indicative. Dialogic with highest price tags still has the largest market share in a price sensitive market in India.

So, why is the price between the lowest and the highest CT Board is almost 10 times ? After all, a CT board is not ‘end product’ itself and it requires IVR applications or voice applications to provide the final solution.

Previously Chinese manufactured products were thought to be cheaper than products manufactured in other countries. But, Sangoma is Canada based company. Most probably, the basic difference between Sangoma and other boards is, Sangoma boards use processing power of HOST computer while other boards have on-board DSP ( Digital Signal Processors) to process various telecom protocol related functions. Many might argue that, with increasing MIPS in PCs, one should really not bother much about HOST PC processing for the CT boards too.

When one compares price of Dialogic boards with other cheaper cousins, one may wonder how can Dialogic survive in any price sensitive market ? I think here are the reasons :-

1. Dialogic has a huge developer base all around the world. After all, it is the oldest and biggest CTI company after merging with all its nearest rivals. It has very well documented APIs for all computer operating systems and lot of documentations available in internet for beginners.

2. Many RAD tools like VBVoice, OmniVox3D, Osidial etc. supports only Dialogic boards.

3. Most probably, Dialogic has the best support in CTI industry at present. They have very good support for both installation as well as developers.

The other cheaper alternatives like Sangoma, Digium etc. uses open source platform like Asterisk which has large developer community on net and growing. But, with almost 90% PCs in the world running on Windows Operating System, support of Windows is definitely a plus and with many RAD tools providers are surely competing well with Asterisk. For example, VBVoice is a toolkit which uses .NET! Now there must be millions of .NET developers in the world and when they find out VBVoice, they all become IVR developers overnight ( almost) and loyal fan of Dialogic boards as well.

Many people who are interested in IVR system, back out once they learn about the high price of CTI boards along with IVR software. The big price differences among similar boards confuse them more.

I have also attended mails from many engineering students interested in learning/doing college projects in CTI field and whenever I tell them price of 4 port Dialogic board, they always get discouraged. And when they ask for alternatives, I explain them about Asterisk based on Linux, they again get discouraged. Not many of them want to install Linux on their PCs. Almost everyone is very happy with their Windows machines.

So, I feel, Donjin and Synway are uniquely placed with their competitive pricing, good C++ Windows Based API. They have reasonably good support for developers.

CCXML (Call Control eXtensible Markup Language) is telephone call flow language in line with VoiceXML which provides telephony control to the voice application written in VoiceXML.

CCXML is completely separate from VoiceXML and work independently from VoiceXML, though they can work together.

CCXML can be thought as an interface between telephony API and voice user interface ( VUI ) written is easy to write and understand markup languages like VoiceXML. Telephony API which comes with CTI ( Computer Telephony Integration) boards and are normally available in C, C++ or other low level languages. So, in order to make development of both call control and voice application easier, CCXML is being standardized which will be more understandable as well as easier to learn.

CCXML provides required various voice call controlling facility like call bridging, call conference, call transfer, handling and monitoring simultaneous calls which are required to develop highly intelligent voice application to cater to real world problems. Presently, only customised voice applications developed specifically for one type of CTI hardware using native API were able to control both telephony calls as well as user call flow.

Using CCXML would provide developers to develop voice application independent of CTI hardware. Using CCXML as well as VoiceXML could provide rapid prototyping and development.
(For complete CCXML specification one may visit : http://www.w3.org/TR/ccxml/)

CCXML seems to be the future of telephony API. With easy availability of manpower who could quickly learn XML than learning C++, CCXML seems to be at right direction for making voice application development easier.

What is VXML ?
VXML, also known as Voice XML is W3C(World Wide Consortium) standard for specifying voice interaction between human and a computer. So, it essentially is a ‘tool’ or high level level language for scripting an IVR ( Interactive Voice response) application. It can take input from human in the from of DTMF digits, automatic speech recognition (ASR) etc. Like standard XML, it consists of many ‘tags’ specific to voice applications which are accepted as standards by W3C.
Voice XML or VXML can be used to specify a call flow in an IVR application without having to learn about CTI boards, its integration with switches, PABX systems etc.

What is VoicePHP ?
VoicePHP is another “tool” for developing voice applications which mainly integrates IVR applications to web. It can be thought of an extension of widely popular PHP language to build voice specific same way as any web application is built!
VoicePHP is tool which seems to be in direct competition with VXML for specifying voice applications on web. VoicePHP is a product from tringme.

Both these tools provide ‘tools’ or ‘convention’ to specify or write voice applications or IVR applications, they differ from other RAD tools like Pronexus VBVoice, Envox CT AD in their intended usage. Most probably, these two “voice application” tools are aimed at developing or integrating IVR with many web applications. With recent growth in usage of outbound IVR application, these two tools may prove to be very useful for many people to integrate voice mail box in their blogs, websites which would be streamed live or delivered instantly to concerned person.
With this kind of tools in place, website visitor could get a call on his telephone by call center to learn more about products, service on the website as well as discuss specific requirements instantly.

While VXML is be endorsed by W3C, but writing complex voice application with dynamic content would not be too easy, it seems. But, it would be easy to build any interpreter which would actually implement the voice application as per the specification written in XML.

I was just wondering:-
1. What is the best way to specify a voice application ?
2. Do we need voice application to be modeled as any Web Applications ?
3. Could we model voice application to be embedded system with real time data exchange with many other applications as well as controlling of call flow ?
4. How would these “voice application tools” would keep up with CTI boards which are being upgraded constantly ?

Though I have previously written about tools for developing IVR software as well as standardised VoiceXML based IVR Software, I was always thinking about writing rapid application development tools for developing simple to complex and large IVR software available in the market presently.

What is Rapid Application Development Tools for IVR Software ?
These are the tools like a Microsoft Visual Studio used for rapidly developing IVR Software as per IVR call flow. While Microsoft Visual Studio is very vast and supports many kind of applications, RAD for IVR Software deals only with IVR Software or IVR kind of voice application. For example, Auto Dialer, Voice Mail, Auto Attendant etc.
Normally they have beautiful GUI ( Graphics User Interface) for implementing IVR Call flow with graphical tools for controlling CTI board related and Voice Related functions. They provide visual tools implementing IVR Call Flow with minimum requirement of actual coding.
They use their own scripting for IVR Application with own syntax or syntax of standard computer programming language like basic, C. Some even provide controls (pre-compiled executable API code for specific function, can be used as it is) to be used standard Software Development Environment like .NET, Visual Basic etc.

I think there is a scope for comparing three ways to develop IVR Software or any Voice Applications as a whole. The three ways to develop IVR Software are:
1. Legacy IVR Software using native API of CTI boards using C++
2. Using open standard VoiceXML
3. Using Rapid Application Development Tools like VBVoice

In my last post about about Legacy IVRS and VoiceXML IVRS, I tried to compare pros and cons between first two in the above list. Here I would like to mention few benefits of using RAD tools for developing IVR Software.

1. One can rapidly develop IVR Software as the name suggests. The developer does not have to worry about CTI Board related functions as they are already built-in the RAD tools, tried and tested with many CTI Boards.
2. Short learning curve for developing IVR Software. As RAD tools use very simple, easy human kind of language as well as visual tools, it becomes very easy for anyone to develop IVR Software quickly.
3. Support Multiple CTI Boards. This may be one of the major advantages for using RAD tools. As RAD tools provide support for CTI boards from multiple vendors, the developer need not re-develop his IVR Application from scratch while changing CTI Cards.
4. Development Support. RAD Tools providers good support in developing the IVR Software and it comes handy as C++ developer may get stuck somewhere and nowhere to turn for help, but himself.
5. The IVR and other voice applications are getting more and more complex day by day. So, RAD tools gives an IVR Developers option to concentrate more on the call flow and IVR usability aspects than spending time on CTI board interfacing.

As I belong to old school of development, I always advocate use of good old C++ for writing stable, robust and working round the clock software. And I feel RAD Tools may not be suitable for large, complex and enterprise IVR or Voice Applications.

But recently I had tested one RAD tool for developing IVR Application, namely VBVoice 5.6.1 from PRONEXUS INC. I hope to write about this and comparing it with other RAD tools in near future.