Nuance to Power Voice-to-Text Transcription on Cisco’s Unity Platform

Nuance Communications announced that Cisco is integrating its voice messaging transcription service into Cisco Unity, the IP-telephony giant’s unified messaging platform. The deal reflects Nuance’s stepped up focus on multi-modal messaging in the enterprise. As for Cisco, it will find that rendering voice messages as an email or text message will be an indispensable, and frequently-used component of its mobile enterprise strategy.

Cisco SpeechView with Nuance Voice-to-Text transcription will automatically transcribe all voicemail messages and deliver them as email, with attached audio files for review and the caller ID in the subject line. Cisco will package the service as part of its Unified Communications System 8.0. It will be marketed through authorized Cisco channels in North and South America and Europe SpeechView featureing Naunce Voice-to-Text messaging. Initially the service will support English, French, German, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, and Spanish. The audio message remains in the user’s voicemail box and can be retrieved at any time.

The agreement with Cisco validates Nuance’s decision to focus its development and marketing efforts on enterprise customers and communications service providers. Thanks to the acquisition of Jott and SpinVox, as well as the internal development of its own “Voicemail-to-Text” service, the company has already forged relationships with AT&T, Vonage, Bell Canada, Rogers Wireless, Virgin Mobile Canada, Optus, Vodafone, Vodacom, SaskTel, TELUS, Movistar and others. All services leverage the Dragon NaturallySpeaking dictation software, but may employ the human element that live transcribers bring, to provide the most accurate renderings possible.