Gartner Eyes IVR and EVP Vendors

Gartner has revealed its "Magic Quadrant for IVR and Enterprise Voice Portals, 2006," earmarking Avaya, Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Intervoice, and Nortel as leaders of the market. Players within the leaders quadrant are high-viability vendors with a strong voice response offerings, significant market share, broad geographic coverage, a clear vision for how voice self-service needs will evolve, and a proven track record for delivering IVR offerings, according to Gartner. Genesys placed the highest in the leaders quadrant, albeit just slightly edging past Avaya in both ability to execute and completeness of vision. Genesys's IVR platform offerings include Genesys Voice Platform (GVP), and through its acquisition of VoiceGenie Technologies, a voice self-service solutions provider with a software platform based on VoiceXML, the VoiceGenie VoiceXML Platform. While Genesys plans to merge the two platforms into one scalable platform, GVP 8.0, in 2008, Gartner adds that enterprises using GVP or VoiceGenie should review the Genesys platform's integration road map. "GVP is an established, leading IVR product and its early support for voice portal architecture and VoiceXML 2.0-certified programming language has enabled it to exploit the shift toward a Web oriented self-service architecture, and to obtain a disproportionate share of early adopters of voice self-service," the report states. "GVP provides leading features such as multi-tenancy and strong integration between self-service applications running on the platform and live agent management of caller interactions." Interactive Response, a standards-based self-service platform, Avaya Voice Portal, a Web-services platform, and Dialog Designer, an open-standards speech application development tool, are part of Avaya's portfolio. "Consider IR if you have an existing Avaya contact center infrastructure and you wish to develop VoiceXML-based IVR applications and support a migration path for native script applications running on Conversant IVR," the report states. "Consider AVP as a next-generation voice portal platform if you have migrated to a VoIP infrastructure and are ready to move to a pure Web-based approach for voice self-service." Intervoice, another leader, has made two noteworthy acquisitions in 2006: it announced the completion of its purchase of IVR solutions provider Edify in January, and in September announced that it purchased the assets of IP contact center solutions provider Nuasis. "Intervoice's strength is its breadth and depth of IVR and speech application experience delivered through packaged applications, as well as its professional services and systems integrations team," the report states. "Intervoice is also a partner for Microsoft Speech Server (MSS) and offers application solutions on this platform." Nortel offers several IVR offerings such as Media Processing Server (MPS) 1000, the vendor's self-service solution for carrier, enterprises, and hosted service providers; MPS 500 for midsize enterprises and small service providers; its Business Communications Manager portfolio featuring functionality like IVR, unified messaging, multimedia call center, IP routing, and data services. "Nortel has a strong heritage in the IVR market and its applications and tools, and a well established team of application and professional services specialists, all able to deliver tailored solutions," the report states. Meanwhile, Cisco Systems and IBM are positioned as challengers, while Interactive Intelligence, Microsoft, Nuance, and Syntellect are classified as niche players, and Aspect Software and newcomer to the IVR and Enterprise Voice Portals quadrant Envox are noted as visionaries. ComputerTalk has been removed due to low market share and no market presence, according to the report. Overall, though, "organizations are increasingly adopting voice response solutions based on Internet standards and a voice portal architecture," the report states. "Leading vendors are improving integration between voice self-service and live agent functions, and are reducing the complexity of developing and operating solutions." Related articles: Genesys Rubs Aladdin and Acquires VoiceGenie Technologies Avaya Launches Unified Communications ''Editions'' Microsoft and Nortel Deliver Unified Communications

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