Speech Server Becomes Voice Feature

Speech Server 2007, originally planned as a stand-alone product, will be folded into Communications Server 2007-the follow-on to Live Communications Server 2005, which is due to ship in the second quarter of 2007. Merging the servers could make it easier for developers to build and IT managers to deploy interactive voice response (IVR) applications, which would often use both technologies. However, the effect on pricing and licensing is not yet known.

Speech Server is a platform for building IVR applications, which allow users to make choices by speaking or pressing numbers on a telephone keypad and to retrieve information in the form of prerecorded messages and prompts or computer-generated speech. Today, Live Communications Server supports instant messaging, presence, and Voice over IP (VoIP), but lacks any IVR functions.

IVR applications are particularly valuable in automating customer-service call centers, which could also benefit from the Voice over IP functions of Communications Server. For example a call center might use Speech Server to obtain information from a customer and then route the call to the next qualified operator based on presence information from Communications Server. Such solutions will probably require less integration work when built on Communications Server alone than they would require on Speech Server and Communications Server separately.