In April, Microsoft sent shockwaves around the speech community by announcing that both VoiceXML and SIP will be “native” to MSS 2007. What does this mean to the rest of the conversational access technologies (CAT) application development and platform community? Plenty.
Continue Reading May 19th, 2006 Dan Miller
With its acquisition of BellSouth, a newer, transmogrified AT&T is taking shape. Its new footprint resembles the coverage zones of Cingular Wireless, a GSM-based PCS service provider, augmented on the fixed-line side of the business by the geographic regions served by the erstwhile “Bell Operating Companies” called Ameritech, SNET, Pacific Bell, BellSouth and Southwestern Bell.
Continue Reading March 12th, 2006 Dan Miller
In the new era of IP-telephony, Web services and software-based solutions are replacing PBXs, ACDs and voice processing “platforms†as pre-configured solutions. Yet, in truth, platforms remain solid solutions for purchasers seeking call and voice processing that is easy, non-disruptive and relatively inexpensive.
Continue Reading February 15th, 2006 Dan Miller
Half way through the first decade of the new millennium, it’s time to take stock of the factors that have had the greatest influence on Conversational Access Technologies’ (CAT’s) progress into enterprise and service provider IT infrastructures. To use the terminology made popular by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) back in the 1980s, CAT is a ‘problem child’. Compared to its data center technology peers, CAT has not performed up to its potential in a marketplace that is characterized by both size and growth.
Continue Reading January 2nd, 2006 Dan Miller
It is no secret that the billion-dollar interactive voice response (IVR) business was built on cost savings strategies resulting from “call diversion” and “agent attrition.” Investment in voice response units (VRUs) was justified by savings resulting from reductions in force in the call center. The math was simple: A call handled “in the IVR” costs less than a dollar, while live agent handling costs in excess of $4.00.
Continue Reading November 2nd, 2005 Dan Miller
As soon as President George W. Bush exhorted viewers of a nationally televised speech to call a hot line number (1-877-568-3317) for help reuniting relatives driven apart by Hurricane Katrina, the alarms started. Media-stimulated calling activity will crash the public telephone network just as surely as a Category III hurricane will breach an inadequately engineered flood wall.
Continue Reading September 2nd, 2005 Dan Miller
For marketing or customer care executives contemplating the use of third-parties for telephone-based services, the questions no longer involve “who, what, when and where?†but “how and how much?†The outsourced market for so-called ‘teleservices’ now exceeds $21 billion globally. Only $900 million of that was spent on hosted speech-enabled applications. The rest, of course, required the involvement of live agents in contact centers around the world.
Continue Reading July 2nd, 2005 Dan Miller
Mass theft of personal information is a near daily occurrence, sparking high-profile coverage on nightly news and in national news magazines. In one particularly noteworthy week, files disappeared from a leading public institute of higher education, a company specializing in secure transport of corporate files, one of the Big Three North American credit reporting companies and the leading aggregator of legal proceedings, public records and corporate reports.
Continue Reading May 2nd, 2005 Dan Miller
The good news first: Enterprises of all sizes are ready to embrace Voice over IP (VoIP). The bad news? They don‘t know what they are talking about.
Continue Reading March 2nd, 2005 Dan Miller
Twelve months and $16 billion from now, SBC is scheduled to complete its acquisition of AT&T. During the intervening months analysts, journalists and regulators will take turns casting aspersions on the deal. From a financial point of view, it’s hard to see synergies emerging from SBC’s stepped up growth-through-acquisition strategy. As the ‘safe harbor’ saying goes, “past performance does not predict future results,†but several Wall Streeters have already observed that the erosion of AT&T’s top line more than offsets the meager growth that SBC has generated in the past few years.
Continue Reading February 12th, 2005 Dan Miller
