Hardware Suggestions for Linux IVR?

Lester Hightower writes "I am the CTO of a vertical market application service provider, and we have a couple of applications which could benefit from an interactive voice response (IVR) system. We are an almost-all Linux shop, and most of our production systems are CGI in Perl. I would like to get some feedback and/or recommendations from the Slashdot community on what hardware and software works well, is reliable, easy to maintain, and so forth." Recommendations against hardware, that do not work well for this type of application, are also welcome.

Comments

IVR

[sigwinch]

IVR is the standard lingo for telephone voice response systems. "Press one for an operator. Press two for an annoying screech. Press three to have F16s bomb your current location. Etc."

Will this need to sample audio figure out what the hell people are trying to say, and then form a response?

Hopefully *NOT*. Speech recognition is a pain in the ass. They almost certainly just want to use telephone tones.

Or is it supposed to understand a command such as "AZIZ, LIGHT!"

<nothing happens> "I've changed it to 'Illuminate'". ;-)

Otherwise you will only get halfassed answers,...

The people who can give useful answers will have understood it. <knocks on wood>