Aculab, a leading provider of enabling technology for the communications market

Aculab's VoiceXML and CCXML interpreter software allows developers of communications solutions to implement standards-based interfaces to applications based on Aculab's Prosody X media processing and signalling platforms. The use of interpreter software significantly speeds up the application development process by eliminating the need to develop with native product APIs, providing faster time to market, while reducing the associated costs.

Aculab's VoiceXML/CCXML interpreter enables the creation of a wide range of converged telephony solutions, operating in both IP and PSTN domains, which require interactive dialog between end users and high level applications. Current examples of voice-based applications that benefit from VoiceXML and CCXML include voicemail, interactive voice response (IVR), conferencing, prepaid services, voice portals and unified messaging platforms. Customers looking to develop multimodal communications solutions, with video*, voice and data, will benefit from the interpreter's 'future-ready' software architecture, which is already capable of handling multimedia call sessions.

Licensed software

Aculab's VoiceXML/CCXML interpreter software is available with a software licence attached to a host machine. System channel counts may start from a small number of channels and there is no fixed upper limit. Evaluation and development licences are available, as is operating system support for a number of popular Linux distributions.

Highly efficient performance

Performance-optimised script execution algorithms guarantee uncompromised system operation for high density applications requiring thousands of simultaneous calls, for either hosted or on-premises deployment options. Aculab offers a highly efficient VoiceXML/CCXML interpreter, which guarantees operational performance. Most interpreters on the market today, as high level applications become more dense and complex and resource dependencies substantially increase the CPU and memory usage, experience performance bottlenecks. In contrast, Aculab's interpreter remedies this situation by using a unique architecture that virtually eliminates application load and memory penalties, thereby allowing applications to stream smoothly.

For use with.

All variants of Aculab's Prosody media processing platforms, which provide low level connectivity to IP and/or PSTN networks, are available to use with the interpreter package. Prosody X DSP boards in PCI and PCIe form factors can be used together with Aculab's VoiceXML/CCXML interpreter as can Prosody S, Aculab's host-based, software only IP media processing option. The integration with third party speech engines (ASR, TTS, etc.) is enabled via Aculab's MRCP client.

If you wish to discuss any requirements, please talk to your Account Manager or email sales@aculab.com

Follow the script

The VoiceXML/CCXML interpreter processes documents, which are specific voice/call control applications written in VoiceXML and CCXML languages, and drives the underlying telephony platform - Aculab's media processing boards. The VoiceXML interpreter conducts the call interaction with a caller, based on instructions from a VoiceXML script supplied by an application server. The interpreter natively understands touchtone input and can manage pre-recorded audio files or prompts. Additionally, using Aculab's MRCP client software, the interpreter can also call upon third party speech technologies, such as text-to-speech (TTS) and automatic speech recognition (ASR), for enhanced functionality.

Product benefits

• Aculab's VoiceXML/CCXML interpreter software enables short development cycles, through eliminating the need for application development with native telephony APIs
• VoiceXML/CCXML software can be easily integrated with existing client-server and web services infrastructures
• The interpreter package offers linear scalability for seamless growth to suit any end-user channel count requirement from hundreds to thousands of channels
• High performance VoiceXML and CCXML interfaces are guaranteed by pre-compilation of scripts and media caching
• Aculab's interpreter package supports the W3C VoiceXML 2.0 and CCXML 1.0 standards for call scripting
• Standards-based integration with third party speech engines (TTS and ASR), using Aculab's MRCP client, means users are free to choose the speech engines best suited to their application
• Aculab's VoiceXML/CCXML package benefits from a 'future-ready' architecture, giving a ready-made migration path to video*, IMS and mobility solutions
• Attractively priced, Aculab's VoiceXML/CCXML interpreter software offers the industry's lowest cost per channel, helping to increase your margins

If you wish to discuss any requirements, please talk to your Account Manager or email sales@aculab.com

VoiceXML and CCXML

Although supplied in one software package, the VoiceXML and CCXML parts of Aculab's interpreter operate separately. The VoiceXML part is responsible for handling media interaction between high level applications and end users. It enables interactive dialogues with humans based on standard media processing features, including prompt recording and playback, music on hold and DTMF event handling. Integration with 3rd party speech engines is also supported, allowing solutions to utilise the benefits of interacting with end users using synthesised speech and ASR. The CCXML part of the implementation is responsible for IP or TDM call control, allowing the initiation, management and termination of sessions with end user devices.

Classic architecture

The architecture of Aculab's VoiceXML and CCXML interpreter package allows maximum flexibility for solution developers. Solutions can have either distributed architecture i.e., functional elements operating on separate hosts connected via IP, or a 'solution in a box', with all functional elements consolidated in one chassis. VoiceXML applications can be housed either in hosted datacentres, or served directly from an enterprise application server in real-time.

The VoiceXML/CCXML interpreter communicates via web protocols (HTTP) to the local or remote, distributed application server. Beneficially, in terms of back office integration, applications can also be set up to query an enterprise's middleware and database systems to dynamically drive content to the end user. Communication with backend databases typically occurs via real-time XML connections over a secure IP link. The application server delivers pre-compiled VoiceXML/CCXML script pages and binary media files, which can be cached locally to improve runtime efficiency and enhance performance. A significant advantage of this intelligent caching of VoiceXML and audio files by the interpreter is that the impact on media latency is minimised.

Scalability and performance

Aculab's VoiceXML/CCXML interpreter features linear scalability with no limit on the number of channels that are supported in a distributed environment. Uniquely developed for use in solutions that handle hundreds to thousands of simultaneous calls, standard testing of the interpreter set begins at 1000 channels per Dual Core Intel Xeon 5160 processor host running at 3GHz clock. That is excellent performance in any language.

If you wish to discuss any requirements, please talk to your Account Manager or email sales@aculab.com