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VoiceXML Named "Paradigm of the Year"
VoiceXML
- VoiceXML takes honors as a paradigm of the year.
It not only makes sense as a way to encode the
structure of things like IVR menus, but also has
significant traction in the marketplace. It makes
sense for a lot of the same reasons that XML in
general makes sense, simply because in a world
that's clogged solid with data, it's prudent to
put labels on that data so we can figure out later
just which piece belongs where. Just about every
Internet-related software vendor we can think
of has made a significant investment in XML for
precisely this reason.
XML
is only a framework technology, though. In order
for it to deliver on its promise, industry consortia
have to get together and work out the common data
schemata that XML expresses. This is precisely
what VoiceXML does for a significant portion of
the telephony space. With VoiceXML you can define
all the key elements of an IVR transaction, including
the applicable grammars for each prompt, the recorded
prompt message (and text alternative), the selection
of acceptable replies, and then the result of
each possible selection. In other words, you can
take what used to be a world of proprietarily
defined state tables that required a dedicated
application environment to tweak, add an open
markup language, and convert the world of IVR
into something remarkably similar to the web.
Sure, you can quibble that VoiceXML doesn't do
enough. Yet. But it's a step in the right direction
and it's enough to get significant work done.
The voice portals (Tellme,
BeVocal,
and others) use early VoiceXML implementations.
Telera
uses an XML variant that will migrate toward VoiceXML
as the standard gets ironed out.
More
than the support of startups, though, what makes
us confident that VoiceXML has legs is the forum
that put it on its feet. A tip of the hat to VoiceXML
Forum founders AT&T;,
IBM, Lucent
Technologies, and Motorola
for starting the march toward ubiquity for this
exciting standard.
-Robert
Richardson, excerpt from CT
Products Of The Year 2000, ComputerTelephony.com
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Copyright
© 2001 VoiceXML Forum. All
rights reserved.
The VoiceXML Forum is a program of the
IEEE
Industry Standards and Technology Organization
(IEEE-ISTO)
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