Patent ID: 7599354

Claim:
A method of facilitating efficient development and deployment of additional features for voice over internet protocol (VoIP) telephony system comprising protocol specific equipment, said method comprising: developing, in addition to existing services for use by the (VoIP) telephony system, a new feature for deployment in the VoIP telephony system using an arbitrary developer protocol, said developer protocol being independent of any specific VoIP protocol, including said VoIP telephony system; performing communication protocol conversion between said developer protocol used to develop said feature and a specific VoIP protocol used by the telephony system responsive to feature-related messages requesting said feature in order to communicate with the protocol specific equipment; and performing communication protocol conversion employing a single interface layer between said developer protocol of at least one of said existing services, which is also in said developer protocol, and said specific VoIP protocol responsive to a messages requesting said at least one of said existing services in order to communicate with the protocol specific equipment.