Advisories

CAT* [CAT with an Asterisk]

Asterisk is accelerating the growth of grassroots providers of low-cost telephony transport and features. The promise of a “virtual PBX” downloaded as freeware to run on any Linux-based PC has attracted several thousand applications developers, system integrators and resellers. But the company may not be up to the task of managing the submissions process associated with management of an Open Source effort.

Intel Spins off NetMerge Software to Envox

Intel offloads the NetMerge Call Processing Software (CPS) and CT Application Development Environment (ADE) in a sale to Envox Worldwide. The sale ends an era in which the maker of telecom and computer boards, software and subsystems competes directly with some of its best go-to-market partners.

Teletech Takes Avaya into Managed Services

The five-year agreement between two leaders in their respective industries signals stepped up demand for distributed contact center solutions. Most importantly, it points to a “managed services” approach using IP-telephony, speech processing and Web services infrastructure to obliterate the line between premises-based and network-based self-service.

xHMI: Smoothing Conversational Speech’s Speedbumps

What XML (eXtensible Markup Language) has done for Web services, xHMI (eXtensible Human Machine Interface) carries into the domain of multi-channel interactivity. Its mission is to allow developers, IT professionals and internal staff to use familiar tools for application development, design, testing and deployment.

Verisign’s Push-To-Talk Voice Portal

Verisign Inc. demonstrated a flavor of push-to-talk (PTT) services that integrates IM-like call initiation with its content management services; thus providing single-button access to popular voice information services like news, weather or stock quotes.