I attended Von.x this week and here's my take on what the VC's are saying about voice and what they're not saying about Unified Communications. 

Deepak Kamra, Canaan, Fred Wang, Trinity, Eric Zimmitz, Granite Ventures.

Eric kicked off the discussion with the observation that voice as a standalone application has been diminishing over the years.  The new market opportunity in voice is integration and NOT voice-centric applications.  Whether it be widgets, gadgets, or voice enablement, startups should be incorporating voice as a feature to enrich, extend and improve today's applications, in particular social networks.  Deepak noted that hot voice applications like Jangle, Jaxtr and JAHJAH have yet to make the transition to FaceBook, but stay tuned.

On the enterprise side, there are a number of early stage companies who are tackling the opportunity of voice-enabling applications, or more broadly speaking, communications enabling business applications in the areas of ERP, fleet management, and financial services.  Microsoft, AT&T, Cisco, Avaya and IBM are all driving this initiative through their Unified Communications offerings. Noticeably absent was any VC enthusiasm over this space.

Jaduka http://www.jaduka.com/ is one example of how voice mashups bring value to existing internet applications. Another is Backflip Software http://www.backflipsoftware.com/, they've tightly integrated with SAP to deliver a rich multi-modal collaborative experience.

Whether it be driven by the enterprise or by the consumer, it's clear that voice is finding new extensions as a feature and not as a service.