Edify Previews VoiceXML Browser

SANTA CLARA, CA - Edify Corporation, an S1 company and a supplier of multi-channel CRM solutions throughout the enterprise, announced that its upcoming Edification 2003 user conference will focus on strategies for implementing open standards-based multi-channel CRM solutions for customer contact centers. The conference features a keynote address by Bern Elliott, research director at Gartner and VoiceXML technical sessions with Mark Plakias, senior vice president at The Kelsey Group and Ted Bray, Edify. Edification 2003 will highlight Edify's VoiceXML solution and detail how Edify users can preserve their current investments in Edify applications while upgrading to VoiceXML with Edify 8. Edify's VoiceXML solution includes Edify's Voice XML 2.0 browser, which is integrated into Edify 8 and its enterprise-proven run time environment, providing Edify's existing 2000+ enterprise customers with the industry's most cost effective migration path to full Voice XML application support. With Edify 8, customers can leverage their existing investments in hardware, software and application development. Edify's software-based, open standards approach provides a rich set of robust tools that allows customers to select the development approach that is best suited for the application task at hand, all integrated into a single solutions platform. "Throughout our history, Edify has consistently delivered a software-based, open standards platform for multi-channel customer interaction, and as a result our customers have enjoyed tremendous total-cost-of ownership advantages," says John Kirst, senior marketing vice president and Edify co-founder. "With each release of Edify software our customers have been able to upgrade their existing applications without expensive hardware replacements or re-writes of their applications. Edify customers have a unique confidence in the robustness and longevity of their solutions, due in large part to Edify's fundamental commitment to open standards support within our core technology. Edify's Voice XML support is just the latest example of this commitment and follows our support of XML/Web Services which was integrated into Edify eighteen months ago." "The promise of VoiceXML as an open standard is profound," said Mark Plakias, senior vice president of The Kelsey Group's Pervasive Communications Program. "It offers a way to separate telephony and media from applications development and maintenance in a way that dramatically lowers capital and ownership costs and companies such as Edify are at the forefront of making this vision a reality. At Edification, attendees have the opportunity to discuss and learn what VoiceXML can, and cannot, deliver." Edification 2003 brings together technologists and vendors with Edify platform suppliers and customers to create an environment in which strategies and customer case studies for Web self-service, contact center, wireless, email, speech recognition and interactive voice response applications are shared among the participants. "Recent technology advances are allowing a much closer integration between contact center infrastructure and traditionally separated applications designed to support specific enterprise CRM strategies," said Bern Elliot, research director at the Gartner Group. "Conferences and other forums that allow peer-to-peer information exchanges play an important role in allowing managers to gain insight into best practice strategies and into options for integrating interaction channels."