Universal IP-based and scalable architectures across conversational applications using web services for speech and audio processing resources

A speech processing web service, comprising:

• a listener for receiving and parsing control messages that are used for programming the speech processing web service, wherein the control message are encoded using XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and exchanged using SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol);
• a business interface layer for exposing speech processing services offered by the web service, wherein the services are described and accessed using WSDL (web services description language);
• and
• a business logic layer for providing speech processing services, the speech processing services comprising one of automatic speech recognition, speech synthesis, natural language understanding, acoustic feature extraction, audio encoding/decoding, audio recording, audio playback, and any combination thereof.

A method for providing distributed speech processing, comprising the steps of:

• receiving an incoming call by a client application;
• assigning the call to an application having a task manager that is abstracted from the application for discovering and controlling speech processing services including audio I/O and speech engine services;
• the task manager generating a control message to a router/load manager for requesting a speech processing service on behalf of the application to service the incoming call;
• the router/load manager dynamically allocating a speech processing service to the application and providing an address of the allocated speech processing service to the task manager;
• the task manager generating a control message for dynamically programming the allocated speech service based on requirements of the application;
• and
• the application processing the incoming call using the programmed speech service.