-response units (VRUs) or remote database servers and applications. Depending on your application, you
might also require text-to-speech, speech-recognition, and switch-matrix cards.
If this sounds like an
integration nightmare
, you're right. IVR pioneers had to stitch together multiple PCs because single servers didn't have enough slots and interrupts to handle all those boards. Fortunately, now there's relief available. New multifunction cards employ digital signal processors (DSPs) to consolidate IVR technologies onto a single card and a single PC. This setup can support hundreds of ports at the same time. The trick is to find cards that adhere to resource-sharing and intercard-communications standards, such as Signal Computing System Architecture (SCSA) and Multi-Vendor Integration Protocol (MVIP).
These two standards allow you to dynamically allocate telephony subsystems (e.g., text-to-speech) as required, rather than tying them to a single piece of hardware. You can link together MVIP or SCSA systems to scale to changing requirements. For example, Dialog
ic (Parsippany, NJ) sells a high-density single-slot card with 24 voice-processing channels using a relatively inexpensive ISDN interface to the outside world. Dialogic's card can serve as many as 800 customer-support lines with a single PC.
To connect their IVR systems to the outside world, companies typically use T-1 or ISDN Primary Rate Interface (PRI) for high-bandwidth, single-wire telephone services. These digital services are not cheap: They can cost thousands of dollars per month, depending on the configuration and local lease rates (see
"You CAN Take It with You,"
September 1995 BYTE, and
"How To Implement ISDN,"
April 1995 BYTE).
illustration_link (12 Kbytes)
IVR systems link callers to corporate database servers. These IVR systems query the database server on behalf of the client.
Hardware Building Blocks
