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Avaya Inc. will kick off the SpeechTek conference in New York this week with the launch of the companys new IP-based speech self-service software.
Avayas Voice Portal supports Web services in an SOA (service-oriented architecture), allowing IT to reuse software components and applications, said Eileen Rudden, vice president and general manager for Avayas communications applications division, in Basking Ridge, N.J.
“This provides an easier, more cost-effective way to speech-enable self-service applications,” Rudden said.
Building on Avayas partnership with IBM to build speech self-service offerings, IBMs WebSphere Voice Server and WebSphere Application Server will serve as the initial speech and middleware platforms for the portal.
“We are increasingly seeing contact centers no longer as business or technological silos; companies are looking to better integrate and leverage their IT infrastructure,” said Bruce Morse, vice president of IBM contact center solutions, in Somers, N.Y.
For developers, Avaya will roll out a new Eclipse-based speech application development tool, Dialog Designer, which the company said will help speed development of speech self-service applications within an SOA.
ISV Gold Systems Inc. used Dialog Designer to create a trial speech application for Amazon.com Inc. that will allow callers to obtain information such as the status of their shopping carts.
Gold Systems used Dialog Designer to work with Amazon.coms publicly available Web service.
“One of the big changes thats part of Dialog Designer versus Avayas previous speech application development tools is the ability to access Web services in a convenient, simple way,” said Herb Morreale, chief technology officer for Gold Systems, in Boulder, Colo. “We were able to build the application quickly without a lot of complexity.”
Avayas Dialog Designer will be available in September, and the voice portal will be available in November. The voice portal is priced at $900 per port for new customers, costs $450 per port for Avayas Conversant users and is free for Avayas Interactive Response users.
The software also requires Red Hat Inc.s Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0 operating system.