Previous posts ([1], [2]) in this blog pointed to the increased intrest in hosted or managed service models for speech applications. Another writing suggested that Genesys’ recent acquisition of VoiceGenie did not bring any news in terms of rapid application development. Apparently Genesys was well aware of this gap in their offering, as they have just announced the Genesys Customer Interaction Portal, “a browser-based portal to simplify the development and provisioning of voice self-service and speech applications”. The announcement is somewhat premature, though, since the portal will only be available in a month or so.
According to the press release, the Genesys Customer Interaction Portal will enable managed services providers to quickly productize speech applications (themselves built from so-called Voiclets) which are easily configurable by the end customer via a web interface. Sounds somewhat like a carrier-hosted variant of angel.com, if you ask me. In exactly what tool the speech applications and/or the Voiclets are themselves developed, however, is unclear: Voicint, the company who built the Customer Interaction Portal for Genesys, strangely also promotes VoiceObjects X5 as a complementary tool for building and managing speech applications. On top of this third-party tool, Voicint also offers VUI design services. All of which suggests that the Customer Interaction Portal is great for provisioning prepackaged applications and/or Voiclets, but not meant for quick-and-clean voice application development.
The dust will hopefully settle as soon as the Genesys Customer Interaction Portal is transformed from vaporware into testable software. To be continued!