Parsippany, New Jersey-based Dialogic Corp, the company trying to establish a signal processing standard in readyness for the information revolution, has formed additional Signal Computing System Architecture Working Groups for developing SCSA System Services and Resource application programming interfaces; Signal Computing System Architecture is an open layered hardware and software architecture introduced last March, said to enable design of computer telephony systems using multiple technologies and standard interfaces. The Working Groups will be responsible for proposing application programming interfaces that will be incorporated as part of the SCSA architectural specifications, says the company. The new working groups include a Voice and Tone application programming interface group to develop a non-specific application programming interface for controlling voice store and forward and Dial Tone Multi-Frequency processing resources in a call processing system. There is a group working on a telephony interface application programming interface – called the Call Control programming interface: Started in December, this group will make a proposal that can support both client and server call control standards such as Microsoft Corp and Intel Corp’s Tapplication programming interface, SunSoft Inc’s recently announced XTL and Novell Inc’s Telephony Services programming interface. Group members include Aculab Ltd, Promptus Inc and Voice Technologies Group Inc. The Text to Speech application programming interface group will develop a non-vendor-specific application programming interface for managing text-to-speech resources. Group members include Berkeley Speech Technologies Inc, Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products NV and I&D Telefonica SA. The System Services group is developing specifications for embedded control of system services such as resource management, network management, and multiple application support.
Working groups already under way
SunSoft is participating in this group. According to the company, draft specifications for several of these application programming interfaces are already in process and specification for Telephony interfaces, Voice, Tone, and System Services will be offered by the end of March. Other Resource application programming interfaces and additional system services will be announced in the second quarter of 1994. Signal Computing System Architecture working groups already under way include Automatic Speech Recognition, defining an application programming interface to simplify the incorporation of speech recognition into call processing applications; and Fax, defining a nonvendor-specific application programming interface to simplify development of applications with facsimile. Once defined, SCSA specifications are documented in the SCSA Specification Manual, which is a public domain document available free from Dialogic. There is an annual fee of $125 for an update service. Companies that have announced supp ort for SCSA include Digital Equipment Corp, IBM Corp, Compagnie des Machines Bull SA, Northern Telecom Ltd, GEC Plessey Telecommunications Ltd, and Telefonica de Espana SA.
