SpeechTEK News Roundup

More than 100 speech technology vendors showed their wares this week during the ninth Annual SpeechTEK Exposition and Educational Conference at the New York Marriott Marquis. Microsoft is looking to provide its own speech platform, and has created a Joint Development Program for customers and partners that are developing and deploying applications built with the Speech Application Software Development Kit on the Microsoft Speech Server (which is part of the Windows Server System group of products). Enterprise customers like GMAC Commercial Mortgage and Jet Blue Airways, as well as partners (including Intel, Intervoice, and ScanSoft) are helping to create speech-enabled applications with Microsoft Speech Application Language Tags, or SALT speech technologies. VoiceGenie Technologies , a provider of VoiceXML speech platform solutions, and Sun Microsystems have partnered to provide a set of open standards architecture solutions for speech activated applications and services. The solution offers carriers, service providers, and large enterprise customers a preconfigured, validated set of speech solutions to help reduce complexity, speed deployment, and lower the cost of speech-activated call center processes. ScanSoft, a supplier of speech solutions, introduced its line of network speech products, dubbed the SpeechWorks Suite of Network Speech Solutions. The products include speech recognition, text-to-speech and speaker verification software; packaged applications, including autoattendant solutions, directory assistance, and multimodal solutions; and application components and optimization tools. Jumping on the voice and speech self-service bandwagon, Edify introduced a voice and speech enhanced version of its multi-channel platform Edify 8.5. Edify 8.5 provides integration support for ScanSoft's SpeechPearl XML 1.0 and BBN's HARK speech recognition engine to enable customers to book appointments, check the status of accounts and orders, and purchase products through guided speech prompts. Phonetic Systems, a provider of real-time speech recognition solutions, aims to make the customer address--change process easier through its Address Capture voice self-service application. Callers update their address information by speaking to the automated system. Callers can access their accounts by name, as opposed to merely providing an account number, to retain more callers in the automated flow. Phonetic System's Address Capture is currently shipping and can be integrated into any existing interactive voice-response system. LumenVox unveiled its latest speech recognition product, the LV Speech Tuner, a maintenance tool for tuning, transcription, and testing of speech recognition applications created on the LumenVox platform. Customers can evaluate and improve the speech recognition application, analyze each stage in the call process, and test calls on the fly--all in house. The application saves companies time and money associated with sending log files to a speech provider for tuning. On the show floor many vendors proudly displayed a "Nuance Partner" sign at their booths. Gartner last week awarded Nuance worldwide speech-software market-share leader in its latest report, "Speech Recognition Telephony Software: Worldwide, 2002-2007." In the report Gartner named Nuance the leader in various global speech-recognition telephony software-market categories, such as number of ports of software shipped, ports market share, number of systems shipped, and systems market share.

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