Novell Inc has been mapping out its plans for its computer-integrated telephony projects, the NetWare Telephony Services (CI No 2,756) and the Telephony Services Application Programming Interface, TSAPI. Perhaps most significantly for NetWare Telephony Services, the company is planning to release an open application programming interface and shared voice-hardware architecture designed to integrate voice services such as speech recognition, text-to-speech, interactive voice response and voicemail. The application programming interface specification is due to be published during the first quarter of next year, while Novell is also planning to deliver the integrated services as part of the NetWare Telephony Service system during the second half of next year. As an adjunct to TSAPI, the company has also released a switch driver normalisation specification designed to ensure consistency and interoperability between TSAPI applications supporting different vendors’ switches. This will be used as the basis for a Novell tested and approved programme for switch drivers, which is due to start before the end of March next year. The company said it is also to open a new interoperability and testing lab in San Jose, which will be open for its switch and applications partners. In order to enhance the call control application programming interface services of NetWare Telephony Service, Novell is making a Dynamic Data Exchange specification immediately available, which is intended as a higher level alternative to NetWare Telephony Services’ existing call control capabilities. Next year, the company said that call control features will be extended to include advanced features such as call-data correlator, to enable call transfers synchronised with the data needed for a call. The company also plans to act as broker to the retail channel for shrink-wrapped computer-integrated telephony applications developed with NetWare Telephony Services partners, as part of its NetWare Telephony Solutions Center system. It will also, in the first half of next year, provide a middleware computer-integrated telephony system dubbed CPS. Through this, the company claims it will provide point-and-click telephone control extensions to GroupWise, cc:Mail, Microsoft Mail, Perfect Office, and Microsoft Office. Finally, also in the first quarter of next year, Novell says it is planning to detail its plans for providing remote access to NetWare Telephony Services to deliver full access to corporate telephone switch services such as long-distance line access, conferencing and transfer. Integration with NetWare Connect Services (CI No 2,691) is also in the plan.
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