Dialogue as an interface to information and services presents many unique design challenges that demand deep expertise and ongoing refinement. While even the worst visual interfaces are at least somewhat usable, all but the best voice interfaces deeply frustrate and confuse callers. Think for a moment about how different a verbal conversation or a piece of movie dialogue is from a movie poster or a Web site. The information may be the same, and the underlying data may be the same, but the actual interface is extremely different. VoiceXML is explicitly designed to support the description of these interfaces, just as HTML is explicitly designed to do so for visual interfaces.
Security is a fundamental concern faced by all companies delivering mission-critical services.
Protecting customer privacy, corporate data, and network infrastructure across all technology layers that comprise today's multi-tiered distributed systems is a strict requirement. Equally important, services must also deliver convenient access with ever-faster performance. Rather, it supports accompanying standards, such as HTTP, SSL, and cookies that make it possible to deliver secure solutions for mission-critical applications. Moreover, because VoiceXML is built upon existing Internet standards, companies can literally reuse their existing Web-based framework for security, authentication, and personalization when extending services to the phone. Businesses can reuse their Web authentication architecture.