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.

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[DRACO-]

You neglected to mention weather this IVR is going to be a palm sized device, a laptop, a desktop, a server tower, a beowolf cluster answering telephones. Or is this going to be set up like on startrek shows, "computer do such and such" with all the appropriate beeping tones?

What the hell is the application other than "an interactive voice response (IVR) system"

Will this need to sample audio figure out what the hell people are trying to say, and then form a response? Or is it supposed to understand a command such as "AZIZ, LIGHT!" (or more appropriate "Lights please").

Please either reply with appropriate information or try submitting a fuller question next time. Otherwise you will only get halfassed answers, and by luck you might get a suggestion such as mine, to redefine your question.

DRACO-