European Computer Telecoms AG, or "ECT," a provider for value-added services in the VoiceXML, CCXML and multimedia domain services, has been awarded funding from the ERP Innovation Program of the German KfW Bank Group.

Officials with ECT said that this year, one million Euros will be utilized to fund the development of a service creation environment for the programming language ECTXML.

Company officials said that another million Euros are slated for the founding of a third-party partner program in 2011.

This program will allow certified software companies worldwide to program solutions for value-added services using the ECTXML programming language.

German federal government under the ERP Innovation Program supports new product development in medium-sized companies that are innovative, profitable and have a high credit rating. The program provides long-term, low interest loans for the development of new products and their subsequent market introduction. ECT was nominated by the Commerzbank.

According to company officials, ECTXML is ECT's extension of the recognized standards for interactive voice response, VoiceXML and CCXML.

All ECT applications for value-added services, such as network-based contact center, IP Centrex, ring back tone, etc. have been implemented in ECTXML, which is ECT's core technology.

Today, third-party developers have a web-based graphical user interface to program ECTXML modules using a comprehensive component library, or Service Enablers and Building Blocks.

Company officials said that the service creation environment now under development will augment the existing graphical tool and include automatic debugging and tracing functions as well as enable model-based editing and simulation.

It is being implemented in the open source community Eclipse, whose projects are focused on building an open development platform, comprised of extensible frameworks, tools and runtimes for building, deploying and managing software across the lifecycle.

The new service creation environment in Eclipse, company officials said, is the technical prerequisite for the complete opening of the ECTXML standard to companies programming value-added services worldwide.

This is the first step in ECT's plan to establish the programming language as an open industry standard for value-added services in the voice and multimedia domain.