Microsoft Corporation, the veteran company, leader ( almost monopoly) in PC operating system has bought Skype, the voice call provider on internet ( peer to peer Skype account as well as any telephone to Skype account and vice versa ).

Microsoft Acquires Skype : New Voice Apps

If it does so, than we may experience many interesting changes the way we have been creating call flow of IVR, IVVR etc.

CTI manufacturers have been making CTI boards supporting Asterisk, the open source Telephony Software so far, but now, they may start manufacturing CTI boards in future directly supporting MSXML for building rich voice and video application eying the 170million Skype users ( growing at 40% Year over Year).

So, we hope the acquisition of Skype by Microsoft seems exciting for IVR World!

Like many emerging services and technologies, development of IVR services too have many competing methods to develop IVR software. While Googling, interacting with various IVR companies, professionals I have found out some different types of IVR development tools or ‘school of thought’ as they call!

IVR Development Tools

Here are few I have thought of :-

1. Old School Of thought – Using built in API in C++ provided by the CTI manufacturers.

This type of IVR developers are decreasing and might become extinct in future! Most probably, Dialogic, Synway and Donjin may provide some lifeline to this kind of IVR developers as they are few CTI manufacturers with well documented API in C++. Old IVR programmers like me still prefer API and C++ as it gives power!

2. Web Style development – VXML, CCXML, VoicePHP

This kind of IVR developers treat IVR software as website or portal ( now we know why they call voice portal) and want to use simple tags for interacting with caller. This is intended to be open standard which will use a VXML Browser ( just like web browsers). VXMl browsers are available on Asterisk as open source also commercially available from Voxeo, I6net, Phonologies from India. Few CTI manufacturer like Digium, Sangoma etc. support this kind of IVR development tools.

3. Extension of Traditional Development tools like Microsoft .NET – VBVoice, Velocity

This kind of IVR tools reside in traditional powerful development environment Microsoft .NET technologies. They are very powerful and does not need any learning curve as conventional C# or VB is used for coding while using the Telephonic or CTI interfaces as component just like any button in the form. This kind of IVR development is gaining momentum now for the obvious reasons.

4. Complete New Tool with simple drag and Drop visual tools – Envox, Invox, Osidail, XtendIVR, OmniVox3D

This kind of tools comes as a complete solution which has its own GUI tool to drag and drop for making IVR call flow, test them offline, compile them and even port to VXML code to host in another hosting platform! With recent advancement in internet, this kind of tools are completely online and developers can just create an account and then start developing their IVR software! I think, the number of this kind of tools are highest at present.

So, these are four majorly available IVR development tools and every tool has merits and demerits. Most probably, a choice of IVR development tool would mostly depend on type of IVR software.

The one similarity in all above available tools are, they are licensed per channel basis. Developers has to pay per channel for their production IVR software for using the development tool or VXML browser.

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.

VXML(Voice XML) is widely used by IVR users who prefer to host their voice applications with hosted IVR provider. Mostly, companies or organizations who want to have their complete control on the voice application and do not want to invest in CTI hardware and infrastructure of running a data center along with telephone lines.

In simple and plain language, VXML based applications remain at IVR user premise and hosted IVR system downloads VXML codes to its server and executes the codes. By this arrangement, VXML based voice applications remain at the control of the IVR user while users of that voice application call up hosted IVR number and avail the IVR service.

Payment gateway, CRM ( Customer Resource Management) are few IVR applications which are widely configured to work in the above architecture.

Though VXML is preferred tool for writing such voice applications, as it works seamlessly with any web services as well as its similarity in coding with HTML. Now a days, many hosted IVR service providers provide visual tools for developing voice applications which are faster and simpler to learn and develop any kind of voice applications.

Main advantages of use of VXML for voice application to be hosted are :-

1. VXML is standard adopted by W3C and now supported by all hosted IVR providers. It provides flexibility to change its call flow locally without having to depend on hosted IVR provider.

2. Many high end PABX systems supports VXML now a days. There are large community who are actively developing VXML based voice applications.

3. VXML offers very high flexibility in terms of distributed computing as VXML codes may reside in many web servers which would be fetched by hosted IVR server. New VXML voice applications could be stored in different server anytime without any changes in hosted IVR platform.

4. Adopting new technologies like automatic speech recognition (ASR), text to speech conversion ( TTS) and other CTI technologies are easy for VXML based voice applications.

Though VXML provides many advantages, it has some disadvantages too:-

1. VXML interpreter introduces new cost of total IVR system which may increase cost of the IVR system.

2. It is not that easy to write voice applications using VXML and to maintain it, trained VXML coders are required full time.

3. There are many hosted IVR service providers who do not support VXML due to cost component. Other alternatives to VXML, visual tools like INVOX come with free for hosted IVR subscriber and much easier to develop voice applications.

So, for voice applications which need to be tightly integrated with other web services, VXML seems to a good choice while quick changes in call flow, visual tool for designing call flow seems better choice.

IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system itself is new in India even after decade of high telecom growth and penetration. And hosted IVR was almost unknown in India till recently. But now, few companies have come up with hosted IVR solutions to cater to few specific IVR applications.

Till now, IVR systems were thought to be standalone, on premise CTI systems for answering customer calls and transfer calls to some department, record a complaint, announce train/flight status and schedule. But with increasing telecom density, both users and telecom providers have been pushing IVR companies to provide many utility services using telephone or mobiles. For example, making payment using IVR system, listening to music on voice portal etc.

Indian IVR market seems to be now rapidly waking up to hosted IVR concept. Till few years back, not many people bothered much about VXML, CCXML. But now a days even normal IVR users are aware about these ‘jargon’. Also many US-based companies who have been using IVR for many customer service related applications, CRM applications on a hosted platform, have recently been actively looking for hosted IVR service providers in India.

There are few IVR services which are available or being implemented in India are :-

1. Voice Blast or Bulk Voice Message

After success of SMS marketing, voice SMS or bulk voice messaging was a natural graduation. In voice Message service, hosted IVR calls up telephone numbers and play a recorded message. This was widely used during election campaigns. There are few IVR companies which provide this service.

Automated dialer is another variant of outbound IVR application which is available in India as hosted IVR service.

2. Click To Call Service

Click To Call service has been in Indian market as hosted IVR service for few years now. It is widely used in trading, directory websites. Recently, travel portals, job portals and real estate websites have woken up to the usefulness of click to call service.

3. Complaint Management System

This is another application which is being used by some companies as Hosted IVR service. With reducing bandwidth cost, and increasing internet penetration, IVR based complaint management system has potential to become preferred complaint management for smaller organisations.

4. IVR Survey

There has been few instances where IVR based survey had been used in India. It is still in nascent stage, but this is one potential area. IVR survey offer many benefits over other traditional form of surveys like mailer, email, face to face, SMS etc.

So, Indian market is also moving towards hosted IVR services slowly. Though biggest IVR users in India, government sectors like Indian railways, BSNL etc. may still be using on-premise IVR systems, but smaller private sector industries like private telecom service providers, ISPs, payment gateway providers, hospitality industry may opt for hosted IVR service quickly.

Few of the hosted IVR service providers are, Niche Tech Services Private Ltd., Simmortel Voice, Phonon, etc.

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 ?

I had posted a report few weeks back about IVR market growing to $2.7 billion by 2011 provided by DMG Consulting LLC, and today I had come across another press release while Googling, which says IVR market will grow to $514million from present estimate of $431million this year, as per T3i Group LLC, which “provides market research, data, analysis, and consulting and advisory services to the telecommunications industry.”

Few Key findings of the report says :
1. 95% of IVR shipped would be supporting VXML from recent less than 75%.
2. Top three IVR systems are
a. Inbound Call handling for contact centers
b. Inbound IVR self service transactions
c. Outbound IVR for alerts like appointment confirmations, payment collection remainder.
3. Inbound IVR will see decrease by 10% by 2013.
4. Outbound IVR will grow by 12% yearly.
5. Analog CTI boards are decreasing and DTMF based menu in IVR application are also on the decline. Speech enabled menu is growing and will be have 2:1 advantage over DTMF.

Complete Press release, Please visit : http://telecomweb.com/aboutus/pressreleases/262963.html

About T3i Group LLC

T3i Group LLC provides market research, data, analysis, and consulting and advisory services to the telecommunications industry. It has clients in 46 countries and conducts its business through four operating units: InfoTrack publishes reports that analyze shipment, revenue, market share and other pertinent data of importance to telecommunications equipment manufacturers; TelecomTactics maintains a database of the features and functionality of major telephony systems; Tarifica maintains a database of pricing-related information covering 400 telecommunications carriers operating in 130 countries; and TelecomWeb (www.t3igroup.com) serves as T3i Group’s primary delivery mechanism for distributing its reports, analyses and data to subscribers.

T3i Group LLC is headquartered in Parsippany, N.J., with additional offices in New York City; London, England; and Cherry Hill, N.J.

VoiceXML is the open standard markup language for all kind of voice applications. Does it include IVR ? Yes, it does. VoiceXML is the modern and latest way of writing IVR Software, develop voice portals and much more!

“VoiceXML 1.0 was published by the VoiceXML Forum, a consortium of over 500 companies, in March 2000. The Forum then gave control of the standard to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and now concentrates on conformance, education, and marketing. The W3C has just published VoiceXML 2.0 as a Candidate Recommendation. Products based on VoiceXML 2.0 are already widely available.” Source

How does one use voiceXML ?
VoiceXML is used the same way as HTML is used! So, voiceXML is the HTML of voice web! And even its architecture is same as that of HTML. And it is used for voice portal as in web portal!
1. It has a voice browser
2. It has a interpreter
3. And finally it has hardware implementation

Advantages of voiceXML
1. it is open source
2. It is telephony hardware independent
3. It can run along with web applications
4. Faster development of voice applications
5. There are now RAD ( Rapid Application Development) tools available for VoiceXML based IVR system development.

Disadvantages of voiceXML
1. Many sophisticated Telecom Protocol specific information like DNI etc information may not be available.
2. Many voice playback options are not available yet.
3. VoiceXML may not be suitable for large and complicated IVR system.

While I am still studying about voiceXML, I would update the post in future soon.