IBM Builds Pervasive Momentum with New Voice Tools

IBM announced new software products and tools that help developers to build and manage voice portals - as well as extend enterprise applications, such as mobile databases, to new devices. This announcement underscores IBM's ongoing commitment to help customers extend computing to new devices using an infrastructure built on a foundation of open, integrated and scalable technologies. IBM has built momentum helping enterprises extend capabilities to their mobile workforce, assisting service providers to find new ways to decrease costs and increase revenue streams, and enabling device manufacturers to provide access to the enterprise. "Pervasive computing plays a significant role in the on-demand era," said Rodney Adkins, General Manager, IBM Pervasive Computing Division.. "Over the past year, we've been aggressively laying the foundation that gives people the flexibility to access and interact with information when they want it, where they want it and how they want it. Today's announcement adds to what is quickly becoming an extensive portfolio of technology, hardware, software and services that span the pervasive computing ecosystem." Adding to its portfolio, IBM unveiled the new WebSphere Voice Application Access product: middleware that simplifies building and managing voice portals and more easily extends Web-based portals to voice. Leveraging the scalability, personalization and authentication features of IBM's WebSphere Portal, it enables mobile workers to more easily access information from multiple voice applications - using a single telephone number. This new offering includes IBM's WebSphere Voice Server as well as ready-to-use email, personal information management (PIM) functions, and sample portlets. It also supports VoiceXML and Java -- including development tools based on Eclipse, the open-source, vendor-neutral platform for writing software - and uses open-standard programming languages to create voice-enabled applications that will interoperate with a range of Web servers and databases. IBM will be working to make WebSphere Voice Application Access interoperable with offerings from third party VoiceXML vendors, such as Nuance and Cisco. In addition, IBM is also working with independent solutions vendors including V-Enable, Voxsurf and Viecore to extend their current solutions. "Nuance is pleased to work with IBM to extend its open, standards-based approach to speech technology," said Lynda Smith, vice president & Chief Marketing Officer, Nuance. "By making it easier for third party vendors to work with offerings such as WebSphere Voice Application Access, IBM helps developers and integrators take advantage of Nuance's market leading speech technologies." "Viecore has been building industry solutions using IBM's WebSphere Voice server," said Viecore's Viecore CEO Tom Chisholm. "The new WebSphere Voice Application Access enables us to build richer capabilities on our current solutions using existing skills and resources, allowing us to bring additional solutions to market with more efficiency and speed." This announcement also includes availability of new versions of IBM software and tools that extend enterprise applications to new form factors and methods of interaction. -DB2 Everyplace V8.1: The first mobile database to ensure zero down time by synching multiple servers, DB2 Everyplace is also the first mobile database to provide data encryption at the table-level, preventing unauthorized access to data if a device is lost or stolen. DB2 Everyplace provides the broadest platform support in the industry for mobile computing and helps sales and field forces respond to customer requests in real time by rapidly serving up data to applications. -WebSphere Studio Device Developer V5.0: Assists developers in the creation, deployment, testing and management of J2ME applications for cell phones, PDAs, handheld computers and other wireless / wireline devices. WSDD uses the eclipse.org extensible architecture to provide developers with an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that combines the reliability, scalability and security of WebSphere with the convenience of mobile devices. -WebSphere Micro Environment V5.0: A foundation for e-business applications on small mobile devices. By using open standards to combine the portability of J2ME technology with the power of WebSphere, IBM delivers the convenience of mobile devices to e-business. Together with device middleware, IBM provides a complete device-to-services solution for extending existing e-business applications to millions of devices.