Author Archives

Derek Top, Research Director, Opus Research

Derek Top is head of editorial operations for Opus Research, a diversified analyst firm tracking mobile technologies and voice communication services. For more than 15 years, he has been covering transformative technologies and producing top-notch business events.

Most recently, he was senior editor and program director at GreenBiz Group. There he helped produce the VERGE conference series and wrote about how the convergence of mobile and information technologies are driving innovation for smart energy and sustainability.

Previously, Top was community manager with Agrion connecting cleantech professionals, entrepreneurs, investors, and service providers through webcasts and onsite conferences. He also served as senior associate editor with Optimize magazine and InformationWeek covering enterprise IT trends for CMP Media. Before joining CMP, Top was managing editor with Streaming Media, Inc.

Contact: [email protected]
Twitter: @derektop

  • Guidelines for Deploying Mobile Biometrics in Financial Services

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    In this document, Opus Research notes findings in a joint report from Mastercard and the University of Oxford to suggest ways to suggest simple guidelines for successful implementation of mobile, biometrics security.

  • The Friendly Face of Genesys: How Customer Interaction Portal Front-Ends a Unified Platform Strategy

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    After a successful sneak peek at G-Force, Genesys Telecommunication Laboratories offered Opus Research a deep look into its new offering: the Genesys Customer Interaction Portal. Currently positioned to support network-based self-service applications, the Customer Interaction Portal is poised to become a business user friendly design and management front-end for all of Genesys’ products and platforms. Developing this product with support from a partner firm represents a new attitude for this historically ”in-house-technologies-only” firm. The Customer Interaction Portal, in all senses of the term, has become the shining example of the friendly face of Genesys.

  • Last Man Standing: The Future of Independent Application Development Tools

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    With Cisco’s recent purchase of Audium, the number of independent, voice-application development tool providers in
    the market has been reduced to one: Vicorp. As the independent tool market dissolves, the focus shifts towards providers of niche functionality and service differentiation that hasn’t been addressed by the classic tool vendors. Being the last man standing, Vicorp is now positioned to build OEM relationships with Nortel, Intervoice and Genesys – the three voice self-service platform vendors with multiple platforms and without an appropriate developer tool strategy – or even become an acquisition target. As the last of the independent tool providers, Vicorp still has plenty of value.

  • Cisco Announces Acquisition of Audium and Metreos

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    Cisco’s announced acquisition of venerable VoiceXML development tool vendor Audium and five-year-old VoIP application vendor Metreos creates one of the first global players equipped to supply its customers a complete servicesoriented stack. These new acquisitions reflect renewed emphasis on opening up the Cisco platforms, focusing on standard protocols and interfaces and fulfilling Cisco’s promise to add applications and value to its offerings.

  • VoiceXML Platforms: Criteria for Platform Selection Study

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    Since 1985, Opus Research has been tracking the drivers of platform selection for Voice Self-Service platforms. Earlier this year, VoiceGenie commissioned a project to update the current criteria used by implementers when selecting a VoiceXML platform. This report reflects the results of the four-month survey process.

  • Biometric Use Cases: Choosing the Right Biometric for the Job

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    Featured Research Speaker Verification has received short shrift from security mavens, largely because it has been ill-positioned by the speech processing community and has been subject to misplaced concern over its relative “strength” compared with more expensive, hardware-intensive alternatives. In… Read More ›

  • Fundamentals of Speaker Verification and Biometric-Based Authentication

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    Featured Research Classifying speech recognition and Speaker Verification as technical cousins has done nothing to further the market development for either technology. Speaker Verification is more than an enhancement to ‘Voice Self-Service’ applications. It is an extension of an organization’s… Read More ›