VoiceXML In The Real World.

Several speech technologies have made giant leaps forward in both deployment and acceptance in recent years. Automatic speech recognition (ASR) and text-to-speech (TTS)conversion, for example, have become accepted technologies for the infrastructure of any speech implementation. In the meantime, VoiceXML, the apparatus that facilitates the deployment of voice technology in the Internet, wireless and telephony world, has become the agreed-upon standard for Internet voice implementation. Additionally, there is the voice browser, which serves as a pure vocal interface to the World Wide Web.

The arena of TTS and ASR tools has always been dominated by a small number of specialized players and has not been regarded as an interesting playground for most IT organizations. These products were viewed as black boxes, activated through proprietary APIs, were very expensive and, until recently, were of inadequate quality. Voice browsers, although positioned much higher in the technology food chain, share the same characteristics in that they represent highly sophisticated infrastructure technology, where most software manufacturers cannot trespass.

By contrast, the establishment of the VoiceXML forum, which brought an end to the frustrating voice standard competition of the 90s, opened the road for development of voice application of all kinds. The most attractive attribute of VoiceXML is the way it emerged from, and contributed to, several state-of-the-art technologies:

* VoiceXML relies on 20-year-old TTS and ASR technologies.

* It is riding the Internet, as a natural extension to the HTTP-HTML world.

* As a native XMLbased specification, it benefits from the relatively mature and very rich world of XML standards and implementations.

VoiceXML appeared at just the right time. Although Internet technologies became ubiquitous, they still required heavy equipment and some technical knowledge. The Internet exposed huge amounts of information, but no natural human interface. Communication devices, on the other hand, immobile or wireless, did provide the means to communicate, but almost nothing more. It is with the convergence of these two revolutions -- the information revolution and the communication revolution -- that voice technology becomes an absolute must. VoiceXML is a great beginning.

But if everything is so promising, why does voice technology linger? The answer is simple: exciting technology is not enough. General acceptance in the IT world, understanding of the potential and several good products have failed to make the breakthrough. Not until last year did some in the IT arena began to believe that a visionary idea with Internet implications is all one needs for that great technology breakthrough. But then came the time to turn dream into reality. Voice technology is of limited use, unless it can be tied to the real world. In other words, now that the computer can talk, it had better have something to say.

Voice applications can be no more than the user interface of content containers. Very simple applications, like dictating price lists, weather or flight information over the phone may require almost no effort. Implementing such an application requires an interface to the data (e.g., ODBC) and an interface to the voice telephony system.

More sophisticated systems may communicate with the customer via a Web browser, involving a graphical user interface with the ability to play voice and video on the customer's desktop. Developing this type of application is possible using Web application development tools that can spread out from the HTML user interface to the voice user interface.

Alas, for most sevice and information providers, much more is required -- provisioning and personalization, security and authentication, connection to heterogeneous data sources and intelligent business rules in the heart of this process. Examples include Web-based financial services. Another sophisticated application is a customer contact center system. This would require, in addition to the above, multiple customer access channels including phone, mail, fax, char, VoIP and other media.

As many components are involved, the intercomponent interface strategy deserves a few words. When dealing with relatively old software, we have to yield to traditional approaches. Proprietary APIs, COM interfaces, direct TCP/IP connections and more are used for these components.

It's a different story for newer components. XML has already become the common denominator for any interface. This makes sense: if the application server talks to the voice world through VoiceXML, why shouldn't this same method be used everywhere? In e-business, for example, several vendors have formed popular XML standards. As for CRM and ERP tools, several have already developed XML interfaces. Databases can be handled as a container of XML information. For other systems, we will have to be patient, as they too will eventually adapt to XML.

So far, we have described the components and connectivity issues involved. These provide the skeleton and muscles, yet one thing is missing: the soul. To make everything work together, business logic, defined by sets of business rules, must exist.

There are several methods for building the logic, such as:

* Third-generation languages like Java, C++, C or VB, combined with server-side and client-side scripts.

* Visual languages, in which a minimal amount of code is written and business rules are defined through an intuitive visual interface. Microsoft Visio and other Visio-like tools become trendy for this task, and not without reason; programming comes into planning, and business-oriented experts can replace technology-oriented programmers.

* Abstract environments, in which there are a certain separation between the business rules as written and the actual implementation. Both the technical details and specific interfaces are hidden during development and become known only at run time. For example, why should the expert planning a telephony application make the choice between the voice over PSTN (traditional telephony), voice over IP and voice over VoiceXML environments?

Making VoiceXML a true story requires an underlying development and execution environment with the following abilities:

* Connectivity to a wide range of components, machines and software packages that together mold the enterprise. These components include database access, networking and data exchange with data-stores on mainframes and other platforms.

* Interoperability with complementing tools, including CRM, ERP, e-marketplace, recording systems and authentication means.

* Rich communication media -- telephony, mail, fax, char, IP telephony and, of course, the emerging VoiceXML.

* A simple yet powerful development environment, where business rules are defined and tedious scripting is minimal.

* High abstraction level, to allow decisions about implementation details to be made at runtime. Let the same application run once with the Oracle database connected to Unix and communication over PSTN and in other configuration on Microsoft SQL Server, with AS/400 as backend and VoiceXML in the front.

Ziv Karp is the vice president of research and development for Composit Communications International (www.composit.net). He oversees the development of Composit's contact center software solution and manages its programming team.