In 2008, the CAT community will bring more products and services to market that integrate automated speech with wireless bandwidth and computer processing as a way to improve the user experience for search, navigation and entertainment. Instead of pushing the proverbial envelope of technology and capabilities, this trend will put an emphasis on packaging and promotion of available technology building blocks.
Advisories
SoundAccess Marks Acxiom’s Entry into Voice Authentication
It is good news for the voice authentication community when a billion-dollar leader in the customer data integration industry adds voice biometrics to its product line. With Acxiom joining VoiceVerified to offer the SoundAccess caller authentication, a significant presence in data integration for financial services companies joins the voice authentication community.
Ford Sync: Automated Speech in the Driver’s Seat
The high profile advertising campaign for the SYNC is having its effect. For the first time in 12 months, Ford’s unit sales had a modest increase. More importantly, SYNC demonstrates that multivendor solutions (meaning Microsoft and Nuance) are more than viable in the automotive vertical.
Verizon Wireless Opens Up to Larger Possibilities
Mobile America will be subject to a “Coke-versus-Pepsi†like battle pitting a newly “open†Verizon Wireless against the locked-down AT&T Mobility/iPhone combo. Last week, Verizon Wireless reversed its hard-line stance against “open access†to its network. Creating terms for certifying third-party applications, devices and software amounts to a radical change in its business model. Or does it?
Securing the Future of Voice Biometrics
With more than 150 people in attendance at Voice Biometrics Conference London, Nov. 28-29, top vendors and implementers of voice biometric-based authentication and identification solutions defined future products, services and positioning. Recent security breaches militate toward broader deployment of voice biometrics, as does the growth of mobile commerce. Thus, the dialogue will continue between buyers, prospects and solutions providers.
Nortel’s Multivendor Survival Strategy: Courting Both IBM and Microsoft
Unified communications calls for traditional routing technology providers to integrate with the top providers of collaboration and Web-services middleware. Thus it is of necessity that Nortel (and its peers) continue to interoperate with both Microsoft and IBM, the leading purveyors of middleware and collaboration software.
Google’s Open Handset Alliance: Promoting Mobile Application Development
In a potentially industry-changing move, Google has announced an open-source mobile platform and an alliance of mobile industry heavyweights, including carriers and OEMs, that contributed to and are embracing the platform. The intention is to push cost, fragmentation and complexity out of developing for the mobile Internet and help create dramatically improved user experiences to drive mobile Internet adoption.
Conversations from Nuance Conversations
With its acquisition of Viecore and the joint offering with Nexidia, Nuance gave the 1,000 attendees to Conversations 2007 plenty of grist for conversations in the corridors of the Boca Raton Resort and Club. Both developments have strategic implications for users, partners and competitors. It was the coming out party for a “new†Nuance with a chance to redefine the market for speech-enabled solutions.
WellPoint Simplifies Opening New Accounts with Voice Signature
WellPoint’s use of a voice-biometric based e-signature to issue new policies portends future deployments that balance convenience, security and cost in the healthcare vertical. The largest health benefits company in the U.S. perceives voice biometrics as a source of competitive advantage. It has used the system to enroll over 140,000 new policyholders.
Nuance and Nexidia Speed Speech Analytics
A beefed-up set of service offerings for the enterprise market reflects Nuance’s efforts to capitalize on the shift in enterprise spending. In partnering with Nexidia, Nuance will lower the time it takes to detect and remediate problems in automated speech callflows as new modalities (read “mobilityâ€) and contexts (or “social networksâ€) take hold.