VOICE Community Offers Free VOICE Testcenter

The VOICE Testcenter offers free infrastructure for development, presentation, and tuning of speech applications and telephone services, that allows users to interact with computers.

The only cost incurred for using the VOICE Testcenter, which runs on the servers of T-Coms Voice Web Portal, is the 0.12 EURO/minute for test or presentation calls on the speech platform.  Sven Klindworth, marketing manager contact routing solutions, T-Com, explains the engagement of his company: "With the offering of a cost free development environment for network based speech applications we want to establish a more dynamic market: consultants, creatives, freelancers, students and professional services providers, who eschew the necessary investments into an own speech platform, can now finally gain experience, develop applications and find out which advantages come with a modern hosted solution for Interactive Voice Response-systems."

Christina Seuchter, senior director network apeech solutions international, Nuance, sees it's value primarily in the intuitively usable graphic user interface: "The VOICE Testcenter eases the development of speech applications practically as well as financially - and therefore serves as a door opener to all those who want to benefit from this promising technology. Nuance's engagement fosters a bigger offering of good speech applications in the German speaking region - for now applications can be developed and tested without investing greater sums into audio production and integration of the speech application in the first place. After approval of the speech application by the customer, an application that has been developed in the VOICE Testcenter easily and cost efficiently can be realized and deployed."

Michael-Maria Bommer, vice president DACH, Genesys, who's company provided the underlying speech platform of the VOICE Testcenter, the Genesys Developer Portal, also hopes for a significant market upturn in Germany: "Cost free development environments and hosted speech solutions are a basic requirement for a broader offering of successful speech applications that are of interest to medium sized enterprises, agencies and other companies with higher call volumes. The VOICE Testcenter will surely contribute to a more dynamic speech market - and help Germany to make up leeway in speech automation!"

Jens Klemann, CEO, Strateco, co-publisher of the VOICE Community, who was responsible for the technical project management of the Testcenter realisation, explains: "To use the VOICE Testcenter one only has to join the VOICE Community www.voice-community.de which is free of charge. In a Guided Tour www.voicecommunity.de/index.aspx?page=200 prospective users can inform themselves about how easily speech applications can be developed, tested and finally deployed in the VOICE Testcenter - and then register as members of the VOICE Community, if they want to use the VOICE Testcenter."

Jörg Emonts, CEO, Telenet, who took responsability for the system integration of the VOICE Testcenter, states: "The VOICE Testcenter with its online-user interface is with the exception of a few features the first freely accessible carrier-grade-development environment in the German speaking region."