Voice biometric technology providers are in position to vie for a share of the market created by the need to provide user authentication for online- and phone-based commerce. Opus Research expects rapid growth for voice-based caller authentication, anticipating large-scale, customer-facing implementations among financial institutions, insurance companies, government agencies and customer care.
Featured Research
SpeechTEK 2006 Retrospective: Rationalizing a New Value Chain
High-profile addresses from Paul English, Microsoft and Nuance at SpeechTek 2006 indicate that the speech-processing community is acutely aware that new economic rules apply. New alliances and hosted service offerings are emerging to lower the cost and complexity of implementing speech-enabled applications. And new “standards†are emerging to ensure that new systems respond to the expressed needs of enterprise customers.
The Friendly Face of Genesys: How Customer Interaction Portal Front-Ends a Unified Platform Strategy
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.
Voice Authentication Baked into Aeroplan’s Customer Care
Aeroplan, the loyalty program administrator that separated itself from AirCanada, has completed ‘Phase 1’ in rolling out a hosted voice self-service (VSS) application that includes conversational authentication of a caller’s identity based on comparison of spoken words with a stored voiceprint. Voiceprints are designed to take the place of personal identification numbers and simplify the log-in process.
VoiceObjects 6: Product Introduction Impact Study
The July 2006 release of VoiceObjects 6, coupled with the company’s re-location to California, marks a significant product and market shift that will influence how enterprises and service providers can implement and manage self-service phone applications –from touch-tone or speech to multimodal voice, video and text-based applications.
Contact Centers in the Age of SOA
By 2007, businesses of all sizes will already be a long way down the transformative path toward a Service-Oriented Architecture. And the contact center will remain a showcase for the best practices that meld speech processing, call processing, workforce management and customer relationship management on an SOA-conformant infrastructure.
Last Man Standing: The Future of Independent Application Development Tools
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
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.
Spain’s Ydilo Hosts “Vodafone Interactive Care”
Vodafone Spain’s groundbreaking portal provides a real-life glimpse into the new generation of customer-care platforms that combine voice, text-messaging (SMS), and multimedia messaging (MMS) to better respond to emerging customer needs in real-time.
VoiceXML Platforms: Criteria for Platform Selection Study
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.