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.
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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.
Microsoft’s Two Launches: UC and Live Search
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.
Dialogic and EAS: Unified Company for Unified Communications
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.
Speech Succeeds Outside the Contact Center
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.
Google Nixes GPhone: Clarifying Mobile Search’s Value Chain
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.
Microsoft Clarifies Pricing for Speech Processing
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.
SpeechTEK 2007 Retrospective: Seeking Sustainable Search
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.