Beta for third version of speech and telephony offering due in May

Microsoft has offered a sneak peek of its forthcoming Speech Server 2007 speech and telephony platform.

Redmond's next-generation product is designed to provide automated customer service for call centres and contact centres.

Microsoft said that beta testers will begin to preview the software in May and provide feedback on the offering, which is planned for release in late 2006.

Speech Server 2007 will provide support for Speech Application Language Tags and VoiceXML. In addition, the product will be able to plug into existing telephony infrastructures and integrate with customer service applications.

With the newly included VoiceXML support, customers will be able to write World Wide Web Consortium's VoiceXML 2.1-compliant applications within Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and deploy those applications, or existing VoiceXML 2.1-compliant applications, on Speech Server 2007.

Speech Server 2007 also introduces a Microsoft .Net Framework-based API for low-level access to core Speech Server functionalities.

Companies can build applications on the Speech Server API using widely known programming languages such as JavaScript and C#, reducing time and development cost.

Speech Server 2007 will include native support for VoIP. The platform will natively support SIP and Real-Time Transport Protocol as core communications protocols.

Contact centres and business managers will also have access to new monitoring tools designed to identify performance issues and opportunities to help ensure that the system is efficiently and accurately addressing caller inquiries.

"Enterprise purchasing criteria are changing. More businesses today than ever before are making telephony and IT-based decisions regarding interactive voice response platform technology to secure investments," said Daniel Hong, senior business analyst at Datamonitor.

"Microsoft's support for VoiceXML and Speech Application Language Tags, in addition to key integrations with its tooling assets, provides Speech Server customers with a greater level of flexibility and investment protection across multiple infrastructures and applications.

"This enables organisations to choose and build an interactive voice response solution that fits seamlessly into their existing environments."

Rich Bray, general manager of the Speech Server group at Microsoft, added: " With the new development capabilities we're providing, companies that previously had to choose between the best long-term platform and support for VoiceXML can now have both with Speech Server 2007."