Cisco Cisco Unified Customer Voice Portal 10.5(1)

provides for sophisticated call switching capabilities at the command of other Unified CVP
solution components. It works with either SIP or H.323 protocols, and also supports Media
Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP) for use with Unified CM.

The Ingress Gateway can be deployed separately from the VXML Gateway, but in most
implementations they are one and the same: one gateway performs both functions. Gateways
are often deployed in farms, for Centralized deployment models. In Branch deployment models,
one combined gateway is usually located at each branch office.

VXML Gateway

The VXML Gateway hosts the IOS Voice Browser, the component which interprets VXML
pages from either the IVR Service or the VXML Server, plays .wav files and TTS, inputs voice
and DTMF, and sends results back to the VXML requestor. It also mediates between Media
Servers, VXML Servers, ASR and TTS Servers, and IVR Services.

Unless it is combined with the Ingress Gateway (see above), the VXML Gateway does not
require any TDM hardware. All its interfaces are VoIP on one side and HTTP (carrying VXML
or .wav files) and MRCP (carrying ASR and TTS traffic) on the other side. As with Ingress
Gateways, VXML Gateways are often deployed in farms for Centralized deployment models,
or one per office in Branch deployments.

MRCP ASR/TTS Server

This device provides speech recognition services and text-to-speech services for VXML Gateway.
For capacity and redundancy reasons, a CSS is usually used to mediate between a farm of such
servers; if no CSS is used, then Unified CVP can support a maximum of two.

Cisco does not sell, OEM, or support any ASR/TTS Servers. Cisco does, however, test Unified
CVP with Nuance and IBM offerings. A certification process is available to allow additional
vendors to qualify the interoperability of their products with Unified CVP. Such certification
is part of the Cisco Technology Developer Program—for more information see 

Media Server

The Media Server is a simple web server, such as Microsoft IIS or Apache. Its only purpose
within Unified CVP is to store and serve up .wav files to the VXML Gateway, as required in
order to render VXML pages. As with ASR/TTS Servers, Media Servers can be deployed singly,
as a redundant pair, or with CSS in a farm.

Note that the VXML Gateway caches .wav files it retrieves from the Media Server. In most
deployments, the Media Server encounters extremely low traffic from Unified CVP.

Unified CM

This is Cisco’s IP-based PBX. It is used to manage and switch VoIP calls among IP phones.
When combined with Unified ICME it becomes Unified CCE.

Planning Guide for Cisco Unified Customer Voice Portal Cisco Unified Customer Voice Portal 4.1(1)