Ask Jeeves to offer voice over IP

IDG News Service - Web information access provider Ask Jeeves Inc. yesterday unveiled its voice-over IP strategy that will allow the company's corporate clients to hold real-time voice conversations with their customers.
Through a nonexclusive technology swap agreement with Trillium Digital Systems Inc., Ask Jeeves will embed the communication software vendor's H.323 voice-over IP stack into the Jeeves Live service to enable voice communications over Internet connections, Steve Roop, director of product management at Ask Jeeves, said in a phone interview.
The two companies are already engaging in joint engineering work, and Roop said he expects the first deployments of the technology to appear in the third quarter. "You'll absolutely see us (Ask Jeeves) as one of the first parties to go live," he said.
Ask Jeeves is best known for its Jeeves Answers service, a natural language question-and-answer format search engine designed for both individuals seeking general information and corporate customers looking for technical data.
The company's Jeeves Live service, aimed at corporate e-commerce customers, currently facilitates real-time text-based messaging between customers and live company representatives. The service typically comes into play when a customer reaches a limit on the basic question-and-answer format and needs to engage another human in conversation in order to close a sale or have a technical query fully answered, Roop said. The addition of voice over IP to Jeeves Live is a yet another step in Ask Jeeves' strategy to "humanize the Net," he added.
Under the terms of the nonexclusive deal announced yesterday, Trillium will gain access to Ask Jeeves' instant messaging and presence protocol (IMPP) standard-based software, Roop said.
The IMPP can determine not only what device a user is working on — PC, cell phone with Internet access or a Net-enabled personal digital assistant — but also what the device's technical limitations are, such as whether it can handle voice over IP, Roop said. Ask Jeeves heads the group in the Internet Engineering Task Force working on the IMPP standard, he added. Other members of the task force involved in IMPP development include Microsoft Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc. and IBM's Lotus Development Corp. subsidiary.
Ask Jeeves has about 90 corporate customers in the telecommunications, financial services, retail and "infomedia" sectors, Roop said. The firm's high-tech customers include Microsoft, Dell Computer Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Compaq Computer Corp., he added.
One of the reasons Ask Jeeves chose to partner with Trillium was the small size of the software file — 200KB — users have to download from Trillium to enable PCs with microphones and speakers to use voice over IP technology, Roop said. The other suppliers Ask Jeeves looked at before deciding on Trillium required users to download more than 1MB of software, Roop added.