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January 04, 2011

Open Source Telephony, IVR: Not Just for Voice Developers Anymore



By Mae Kowalke, TMCnet Contributor


Some might view open source telephony as the domain only of hard-core voice developers -- businesses that specialize in IVR and phone services, and have the experience and/or resources to build their brand around such offerings.

IVR service provider Voxeo (News - Alert) takes a different view.


In a recent TMCnet video interview, Voxeo’s product manager, Adam Kalsey, said that open source telephony is advantageous to many kinds of businesses -- including developers working on expanding their market reach and organizations looking for ways to trim their budgets.

“Open source is a great way to reduce costs and improve the distribution of marketing for products,” Kalsey said in the interview.

Currently, Voxeo is focusing much of its efforts on helping Web developers learn about and utilize open source telephony and IVR. Lots of Web developers that have done little or no work with telephony and IVR applications can nonetheless expand the features of their products by taking a look at this area of open source.

With open source telephony solutions like the ones offered by Voxeo, Kalsey said, it isn’t necessary to understand the inner workings of VoIP, IVR or how phone systems work. This is a tool that can, with relative ease, be used to build telephony features, such as making a phone ring, sending text messages or conducting instant messaging sessions, into their applications.

Voxeo’s audience for IVR solutions like the recently introduced VoiceObjects (News - Alert) on Demand is start-ups or independent developers looking for ways to add value to their products.

Another major aspect of Voxeo’s focus these days is software-as-a-service (SaaS), an area that the company is no stranger to. Paula Bernier (News - Alert), who heads up the IP Communications Magazines group at TMC, noted in a recent article that Voxeo has been involved with SaaS since as far back as 2000.

“The company got its start by delivering solutions that made it easy for anyone to create voice applications,” Bernier wrote in the October 2010 Internet Telephony (News - Alert) article, quoting Voxeo’s CEO Jonathan Taylor. “It was among the first to adopt VoiceXML (News - Alert).”

Voxeo recently took that involvement with SaaS to a new level by combining its technologies with VoiceObjects, a software development platform used to create, distribute and manage solutions, dubbed “self-service.” The platform provides a way to build IVR, iPhone and automated mobile Web and other voice-based apps.

In late 2008, Voxeo acquired VoiceObjects. This past August, a SaaS version of VoiceObjects was officially released.

“With VoiceObjects On-Demand, Voxeo is giving its customers a significant reduction in deployment costs, unmatched solution reliability, and the ability to expand rapidly as requirements change,” Taylor said in the Internet Telephony article.

For more about the capabilities of open source telephony and how it can be used to enhance Web applications, watch the full TMCnet video.


Mae Kowalke is a TMCnet contributor. She is Manager of Stories at Neundorfer, Inc., a cleantech company in Northeast Ohio. She has more than 10 years experience in journalism, marketing and communications, and has a passion for new tech gadgets. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Tammy Wolf


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