International Business Machines Corporation

Nicholas David Butler

David Seager Renshaw

Adrian C Gay

Ronald John Bowater

Hao Yang

Hui Lei

Minkyong Kim

Liangzhao Zeng

Daniel Nikolaus Bauer

Han Chen

Gidon Gershinsky

Peter James Brittenham

Konstantin Shagin

Steven P Larky

Brian Clive Homewood

Roderick M West

David Andrew Clarke

Kristijan Dragicevic

Marc-Thomas H Schmidt

Matthew Damien Bates

Mervyn Anthony Staton

Malcolm Douglas Buttimer

David Rushall

Kathryn Heninger Britton

John William Sweitzer

Brent Alan Miller

Roderick Michael West

Michael Cobbett

Marcello Vitaletti

Lawrence Leon Porter

Robert David Callaway

Adolfo Francisco Rodriguez

Yuk-Lun Wong

Andrew James Ritchie

Richard Eugene Salz

Roy B Harrison

Stephen Graham Lawrence

Jack E Bresenham

Graham Hugh Tuttle

Stephen Graham Copinger Lawrence

Sanjay Nagchowdhury

Steven John Hyatt

Jeremy Peter James Hughes

Christine M Draper

Rachel Edwina Jackson

Paolo G Sidoli

Jong-Han Kim

Susan Malaika

Philip Randall Coxhead

Jong H Kim

Carlos Cesar Araujo

Jacqueline Bowden

A mechanism for declarative service domain federation uses a declarative approach to both the visibility aspect and the management aspect of service domain federation. Instead of manually exporting services, that is, selecting individual services from source domains to be visible in the target domain, using the present system, a federation architect uses a federation console to specify federation intent. The federation intent may include federation rule, query-based service group, and quality-of-service (QoS) policy. Based on the declared federation intent, a planning engine resolves the individual services based on the group query, generates the service visibility configuration, and creates the necessary service proxies and/or mediation objects to satisfy the goal. At runtime, a service monitor collects the performance metrics of federated services and dynamically adjusts the mediation/proxy configurations to maintain the QoS objectives specified by the federation architect.

Declarative service domain federation

An apparatus and a method provide a solution for a computer system. The apparatus may include a package containing or referencing a plurality of software components of the solution and containing a solution definition defining in logical terms the topology requirements of the solution. The plurality of software components may be packaged as installable units which comprise a descriptor providing requirements of a target hosting environment for the software component and the software component to be installed. The solution definition of the package may include target hosting environments of the software components of a solution being defined in terms of requirements each software component has on its own target hosting environment and requirements the solution imposes on the target hosting environments.

Solution for a computer system

A composite manager may include a set of managers virtualized as a single entity. The composite manager may also include at least one of a module to provide a single manager interface for the set of managers to manage at least one entity, and a module to provide a single manageability interface for the set of managers relative to any managing entity of the composite manager.

Virtualizing a set of managers to form a composite manager in an autonomic system

Delegation of processing functions to specialized appliances in an enterprise is provided. An appliance typically comprises a combination of hardware and resident firmware that addresses needs in a computing environment, such as by providing common message transformation, integration, security, filtering and other functions. Delegation is carried out by specifying at least one XML function for front-process offloading from a server to a corresponding appliance configured to receive messages pushed towards the server, communicating management directives to the appliance for configuring the appliance to perform the specified XML function(s) according to specific requirements dynamically specified by the server and communicating instructions to the appliance so that the appliance augments received event messages with intermediate processing information based upon the front-process offloading, as received event messages pass through the appliance.

High-performance XML processing in a common event infrastructure

This invention relates to the management, in an interactive voice response system, of a plurality of speech technology modules. In particular it relates to an apparatus and a method for dynamically determining which of a plurality of speech technology modules to use during voice interaction between the system and a user. In prior art IVR systems each speech technology module is configured for a specific application or task. Most speech technology modules have different lexicons for the range of functions but it is the full lexicon which can determine an engine's suitability for a language. For instance, one type of speech recognition engine is preferred for certain languages whereas IBM ViaVoice is a good general all rounder. Choosing one speech recognition module according to application or function alone is not entirely satisfactory and there is a need for improvement. The present solution is to select, for each interaction, one of the speech technology modules from the plurality of the modules to be used by the application according to the environment property of the interaction.

Management of speech technology modules in an interactive voice response system

A voice processing system is disclosed having a first interface for receiving telephone calls from the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) and application software for processing received PSTN telephone calls. The voice processing system supports an API to allow the first interface to inform the application software of the presence of the call. The voice processing system further has a second interface for receiving telephone calls from an internet protocol (IP) network, and a signaling subsystem for routing an IP call from the second interface to the application software. This signaling subsystem uses the same API as is used to inform the application software about PSTN calls. Therefore, it is transparent to the application software whether an incoming call has been received from the IP network rather than the PSTN.

Voice processing system

A voice processing system, method and computer program product therefor, allows telephone callers without computers to access World Wide Web pages from the Internet. Usual graphical-based Hyper-Text Mark-Up language (HTML) commands are interspersed with special HTML tags including the commands and data for forming a voice application, which, when run on the voice processing system, provides a voice browser for allowing telephone callers to access Web pages. The voice application tags are provided together with the remainder of the HTML document, thus facilitating editing of the combined data. This helps to keep the graphical browser and voice browser versions of the same data set synchronized.

Voice processing system, method and computer program product having common source for internet world wide web pages and voice applications

An interactive voice response (IVR) system comprises many different application objects which combine to deliver a voice application. These objects typically include IVR programs or scripts, prompts or voice segments and server scripts or programs for communicating with external systems or databases. Large voice applications can contain hundreds of application objects and potentially thousands of voice segments. The grouping of the application objects becomes more important in the later stages of the process. There is described a method of grouping data objects having different data categories, such as IVR programs or scripts, prompts or voice segments, in an application processing system. The method comprises associating a collection of such data objects with a group (a group such as the data objects within a voice application) and arranging the data objects into a sub-groups within the group where each sub-group corresponds to category of the data object (scripts, prompts, voice segments etc) and creating a graphical representation of the sub-groups using a graphical user interface.

Data object management system

A voice processing system is connected to a switch via multiple telephone lines, and provides a set of line objects, each line object being associated with one of the physical telephone lines. The line object allows a demarcation to be made between the underlying voice processing system software, and external business applications. Thus a line object supports a set of methods such as Get DTMF Tone, Play Audio, Answer Call, and End Call, to allow the external business applications to perform desired operations on a telephone line. These methods are invoked via a set of corresponding IVR action objects, which in turn are integrated into the business application. The business application itself, and its IVR actions, regard the line objects effectively as servers to provide IVR functionality. The business application may therefore run partially or completely on a separate physical machine from the IVR system itself.

A system for remotely developing an telephony application for a call handling server comprises: program code components for each process used by the call handling server and an associated reduced code components for each process; an application designer for combining the reduced code components into an application design; networking capability for sending the application designer and reduced code components to a client and receiving a completed application design; and an application builder for assembling, according to the application design, the program code components into an self contained application.

Remote application design

The present invention relates to establishing a communication channel between two communication systems having computer telephony integration (CTI). Many CTI systems are configured into incoming and outgoing lines according to the anticipated demands. Consequently, if sufficient outgoing or incoming capacity is unavailable at a given time to support a communication channel of required characteristics, the users of such a system must conventionally wait until sufficient capacity becomes available. However, the present invention determines who the intended addressee is and can instruct the CTI system associated with that addressee to instigate the establishment of a communication channel to the user who originally desired the connection. The instructions can be sent to the intended addressee using for example, another communication network, such as the Internet or other data communications network. This arrangement also allows the call to be placed in the reverse direction, where this is favourable for tariff reasons. The invention also includes the automatic selection of a telephone network carrier based on tariff data requested over a data network such as the Internet.

Communication method and system

The invention relates to a voice processing system capable of outputting voice prompts and background music. The volume of background music is progressively variable relative to the voice prompts or speech. The progressive variation is effected by multiplying the background music samples by a scaling factor and then adding together a current voice sample and the scaled background music sample. Accordingly, when the combined samples are output to the user the volume of the background music varies.

Voice processing system and method

A data processor comprises storage (e.g., registers) for each of first, second and third values, a processor condition register for processor condition codes, and logic for decoding instructions including a specific instruction defining an operation between the first value and either the second value or the third value, the selection of the second or the third value being made by the processor in dependence on the state of said processor condition code. The invention is of particular, but not exclusive, application for the plotting of lines in a display system. In an example of a display system incorporating such a data processor, a pixel can be plotted on each processor instruction cycle.

System for processing iterative tasks in data processing systems

A voice processing system comprises a computer workstation 80 running a voice system software and a telephony interface module 70 which is attached via a trunk line 100 to a telephone switch 10. The computer system 80 and the telephony interface module 70 are connected by a standard data connection 230 such as a SCSI connection over which voice data is exchanged. The SCSI interface is provided with a voice device driver capable of handling voice data by means of an appropriate set of commands.

Voice processing system with telephone interface subsystem

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Romsey, United Kingdom

Nicholas David Butler