Traditional Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems have been expensive to deploy and maintain because they require a mastery of proprietary tools and technologies, expensive hardware and professionals trained on specific software and hardware.

Ascent’s AscenTel™ Server platform makes voice-enabling cost-effective.

By acting as a layer between the telephone line and the web server, AscenTel™ lets organizations continue to use their existing infrastructure. Information on the web server is made available to telephone users, by redesigning HTML pages to output VoiceXML for telephony clients; the original HTML can still be output to web browsers.

Therefore, the time to create VoiceXML pages and interface to existing servers and databases is a fraction of the time required for an IVR solution. Most important, because VoiceXML is the industry standard, there is no more dependence on proprietary third-party tools which means application maintenance is also less costly.

Cost Comparison  for a Typical  Voice  Application
 
For a 48-Port Server Traditional IVR AscenTel™ Server
Specialized Hardware + Software $ 150,000 - 200,000 $ 50,000 – 100,000
Development Effort * 12 - 24 person months 3 – 6 person months
Development Cost ** $ 240,000 $ 60,000
Maintenance Effort per annum 6 person months 2 person months
Maintenance Cost per annum **

(Assuming offsite maintenance and support, also latest release and updates)		 $ 60,000 $ 20,000
Languages Used Specialized Tools VoiceXML
(a W3C Standard)

* For an average sized project with 20 menus generated from a database
** Assuming a cost of $ 10,000 per person month