Earlier this week, on Tuesday, October 16th, Microsoft’s speech technologies played in both ends of a doubleheader. Outlook Voice Access was showcased to attendees of the Unified Communications Launch event in San Francisco. Meanwhile, speech-enabled search figured prominently in newly rolled out phone-based services: 1-800-CALL 411 (based on the recent acquisition of Tellme) and Live Search for Mobile.
Continue Reading October 18th, 2007 Dan Miller
Acquisition of EAS brings Dialogic Corporation products and personnel from Brooktrout, SnowShore and Excel Switching. No direct competitor has a product line that spans fax boards, media servers and central office switches, respectively. Along with partners, it has an important role to play in defining and simplifying hardware and software for hybrid (aka “convergedâ€) networks and unified communications.
Continue Reading October 9th, 2007 Dan Miller
The efforts of IBM, Microsoft/Tellme and Nuance notwithstanding, several companies are making inroads outside contact centers. Soliloquy, Yap and Datria have raised the profile of automated speech-based solutions in classrooms, campuses and distribution centers (respectively). Each new use case expands potential in growing markets.
Continue Reading September 23rd, 2007 Dan Miller
Peter Norvig, Google’s head of research, recently said that getting into the hardware business with a Google-labeled phone is not a top priority for the search engine giant. This makes strategic sense for a company that has generated billions in revenues and profits by delivering software and services across a broad variety of branded networks and devices. “Open” networks trumps the prospects of branded, proprietary handsets.
Continue Reading September 17th, 2007 Dan Miller
Under a new pricing and licensing framework, Microsoft Office Communications Server and Office Communicator are sold like Microsoft Exchange or Windows. That makes speech processing available “for the price of IM†in many situations. But the radical difference is pricing for independent software vendors (ISVs) and certified Unified Solutions developers.
Continue Reading September 4th, 2007 Dan Miller
Speech-enabled search was very close to the core of SpeechTEK 2007. Starting with a keynote in which Google’s Mike Cohen described what his company has learned from offering 800-GOOG411, then cascading through a number of announcements and panels on “speech search.†It’s clear that much work remains on several fronts (user experience, database refinement, geo-positioning advertiser recruitment and ad placement, to name a few) as ecosystem members forge partnerships to bring a “complete†service to market.
Continue Reading August 27th, 2007 Dan Miller
On Tuesday, August 21, Opus Research has organized a day’s worth of panel discussions called “The Year of Living Virtually,” as part of SpeechTEK in New York City. Under discussion will be the creative ways that service providers meld IP-telephony and unified communications (UC) to change the nature of contact center outsourcing from its past focus on distributed voice processing applications to promote enhanced call routing that provides on-demand access to agents, voice platforms and Internet-based applications and resources.
Continue Reading August 15th, 2007 Dan Miller
Last week, two studies described how Internet search is used by the large majority of consumers as a research tool before buying locally. The Web has now overtaken all other media, including printed Yellow Pages as a primary source for local business information. Directory assistance and cell phones were only used 3% of the time as a primary source. However, Local Mobile Search (LMS) expects that will change over time.
Continue Reading August 13th, 2007 Greg Sterling
IBM brings conversational speaker verification close to “off-the-shelf” status by making it a “feature pack” for WebSphere middleware. Speaker-independent, text-independent and language-independent verification overcomes many obstacles to adoption and has the potential to create a secure and pleasant user experience.
Continue Reading July 31st, 2007 Dan Miller
The giant company whose name is synonymous with Web search is ready to invest a minimum of $4.6 billion to acquire wireless bandwidth that is unfettered by carrier affiliation, device “lock-ins†and general lack of “openness.†Google is joined by a number of other service providers who would like to attain access to a national wireless network on a wholesale basis. With an auction scheduled for the first quarter of 2008, the cause of Local Mobile Search will have a decidedly national, even global, scope.
Continue Reading July 23rd, 2007 Dan Miller
