Acknowledging that the vast majority of its business comes through its indirect channel, Voxeo has beefed up its partner support resources in significant ways. It has committed real dollars to market development and joint marketing programs culminating in distributing sales leads, investing in training, and maintaining a pool of “Marketing Development Funds” (MDF) to underwrite co-marketing and demand generation efforts.

Likewise, its Developer Portal has been retooled to include marketing and sales support resources – collateral, case studies, sample proposals, demos, Webcasts and the like – to help shorten the sales cycle associated with increasingly complex multi-channel platform implementations. Just as important, its “Obsession Teams” of support technicians guarantee 20 minute response time to issues emanating from Certified and Global partners.

Voxeo is making a successful transition from a “geeky” techno-focussed company whose strict adherence to standards like VoiceXML and ccXML, as well as the layering on of development tools and multi-channel resources appealed to the adventurous appDev Nation. Now it has developed a compelling story around “The Triple Cloud” – a concept that leverages its long tenure cloud-based self-service resources, while amplifying the message that deployments can be on-premises, in-the-cloud or both.

Voxeo has confidence in its technology and recognizes that competing for enterprise dollars at this point is a marketing challenge. The competition includes old guard hosted service providers like West Interactive, Convergys and Microsoft/Tellme. But all contact infrastructure providers are adding cloud-based options. For example, Cisco today formally launched its Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution for Contact Center. It has hooks into the Unified Customer Voice Portal (CVP), as well as social network monitoring and a modicum of multi-channel support. Genesys and Avaya have similar product lines and cloud-based roadmaps.

Cloud-based e-commerce and CRM specialists, an inchoate group that pits Salesforce.com and its partners against Amazon Web Services and its partners, as well every CRM platform provider that has a hosted flavor (think Pegasystems, Oracle/RightNow, Microsoft/Aspect, SAP….). To compete effectively in this environment, Voxeo is correct to put extra umph behind its partner support strategy. That makes Voxeo Connect the right initiative at the right time.

Fueled by maturing standards for Web services and a plethora of APIs and development tools to accelerate “mash-ups,” the move of enterprise computing, communications and storage infrastructure is only accelerating. In USAirway’s case, the move to the Nuance on Demand (NoD) cloud sped up deployment, helped avoid capital spending and moved much of the administrative expense to a third party. At the same time, it replaced a multiplicity of diverse platforms with a single solution.

According to a press statement, economic justification came, in part, from shortening call durations and increased mechanization rates for repeated calls. Yet it was all done as part of an effort to “homeshore” many of the contact center rep jobs that had found their way into other labor markets.

Natural Language Understanding played an important role in USAirway’s purchase decision. The IVR will speak in the voice of “Wally,” much as Amtrak has employed “Julie” and BellCanada invoked “Emily” to answer calls, elicit customer response and route callers to the correct resource (be it an “self-service” IVR or customer service rep. The speech enabled IVR and call steering app resides in the cloud, but it is closely integrated with the network that delivers calls to USAirway’s 1,800 reservation agents, part of the airline’s 6,000 unionized customer care and reservation agents.

Instantiating these conversational applications “in the cloud,” is a natural. As with old-guard CallPromptr service (from AT&T) or EVS (from then MCI, now Verizon Business) calls arrive at an IVR which can ascertain the caller’s identity from ANI (automatic number identification) and gauge as much of the context as possible in order to offer highly personalized service. It is akin to what the merged United Airlines (with Continental) will be implementing for its self-service line, relying on Voxify-developed applications running on Microsoft’s Tellme platform.

TuVox was co-founded by Steve Pollock (coming over from Edify) and Ashok Khosla (who had been the Managing Director of Apple’s development labs in India among other endeavors). The two visionaries saw an opportunity for a high-tech firm that could use advanced VoiceXML, Eclipse-based application development tools and techniques bordering on artificial intelligence to shorten the time it takes to deliver speech-enabled applications that, in many ways, mimicked human-to-human interactions.

TuVox has long placed emphasis on rapid deployment and constant tuning/refinement over time. It has also exhibited high-levels of flexibility in terms of deployment strategies. It operates its own hosting facilities built largely on Genesys’ Voice Platform (GVP) technology in Texas, Florida and Georgia, but has also, at various times, had its applications running “inside” or “on top of” application servers in Tellme and Convergys’ clouds.

Going forward, West notes that AMC Entertainment, Canon, ACER (#2 PC manufacturer in the world), National Research Corporation and Progress Energy are among Tuvox’s largest clients. Over the years, however, TuVox’s tools and resources were employed to support new phone-based interfaces for an impressive customer list, that has included 1-800-Flowers.com, American Airlines, British Airways, M&T Bank, Motorola, Telecom New Zealand, Time, Inc., BECU (Boeing Employees Credit Union), Virgin America and USAA. Thus it has built an equally impressive library of showcase (but customized) voice applications for travel (especially airlines), entertainment, telecom, utilities, retailers and financial services.

With the acquisition, West Interactive is solidifying its expansion strategy, in terms of both geography and functionality. Both companies have extensive experience with GVP; but have “multi-platform” experience and aspirations. Both see growth potential beyond North America and have experienced success in Australia/New Zealand and Western Europe. Perhaps most important, they share an engagement model that promises clients rapid, rock solid deployment, constant monitoring and maintenance and reliable reporting and analysis. This product range addresses the expectations of the customers for cloud-based, hosted or “on-demand” solutions providers.

Netherlands-based Parkmobile Group positions itself as “the sole supplier to offer totally integrated solutions for management of all parking-related issues.” In Grand Rapids, it has contracted with VoltDelta On Demand Solutions to host an application which registers subscribers by having them speak their license plate number and credit card information from their cell phones. In subsequent transaction, it uses caller ID to identify and validate the originating telephone. It prompts callers to identify the “zone” in which they are parking and then processes the payment.

Callers can also instruct the system to send them a text message when the meter is about to expire. At that point they can extend their parking time without having to run out to feed the meter. A spokesperson for VoltDelta characterized the service as “the first of its kind” in North America; however, Parkmobile is a global company which, in addition to Amsterdam, has European offices in Athens, Brussels, London and Munich. Its North American operations are in Atlanta, Burbank, New York and Toronto.

Other global trends are undeniable. With downward pressure on both capital spending and staffing, providers of solutions that include hosted, on-demand or “in the cloud” alternatives have reason for optimism. We were briefed on the new services and features offered by a broad range of service providers, including incumbent telephone companies (Verizon Business), and the broad range of platform providers ranging from the the full-blown version upgrades from Voxeo (showcasing Prophecy 10) and Convergys (introducing “Intelligent Self-Service”) and VoltDelta’s wholesale refresh of its automated contact center solutions.

Evidence of heightened interest in all things mobile was everywhere. This included more enlightened discussions of the ultimate voice user interface for mobile devices, voice search and multimodal/outbound notifications. I was also very encouraged by the level of interest shown in voice biometric-based caller authentication. We’ve clearly crossed a threshold whereby the opening questions are concerned with implementation options and overcoming recorded “spoof” efforts, rather than last-year’s customary “Does it really work?”

Voxeo has trademarked the term “The Unlocked Communications Platform” in reference to the new Prophecy 10 software. In doing so, it may have captured the overall spirit of the speech community. The year-and-a-half-long economic downturn has made us all yearn to be free and has generally sped up the process that enterprise planners go through to identify and define which technologies and personnel to jettison and which to keep and leverage. “Mobility, Security and Openness” are the “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” of the new regime. Add the human element and a focus on the best user experience and you’ve identified where the pockets of opportunity are going to be.