Recently there’s been an emergence of new communication services that offer simple APIs and scripting languages to create basic IVR applications. Some of these services include added features that come standard with most VoiceXML platforms including speech recognition and text-to-speech, but why do we need more scripting languages to create IVR when VoiceXML is open and so widely adopted? Billions have been spent on R&D to create VoiceXML and it is truly the de facto open standard for IVR programing.
These services are offered under the guise of “cloud” communications and attempt to simplify IVR development. While they do have their merits, they seem to simplify IVR by eliminating features that amount to a weak subset of VoiceXML’s functionality. Regarding the “cloud” aspect, for years Plum’s ScratchPad has provided a facility for developers to host their VoiceXML code enabling an architecture akin to “cloud” computing. Programmers can use the ScratchPad to develop applications using the full breadth of VoiceXML’s feature set.
For more information about IVR development and Plum’s ScratchPad, please sign up for a developer account @ IVR Development
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