SpeechCycle, a company that hosts millions of technical support calls, primarily from Cable or satellite TV subscribers, has joined with Jingle Networks, the popularizer of “free directory assistance” to offer a way for businesses to insert sponsored audio messages into customer care calls. The joint offering is well suited for the current economic climate because it gives companies across a multiplicity of verticals to deliver targeted promotional messages while thereby attracting advertising dollars to offset customer care operating expenses.
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Voxeo launches Tropo.com
In a development that brings great promise to developers of self-service applications, Jonathan Taylor, CEO of Voxeo, announced the formal launch (in beta) of a new service called Tropo.com at the eComm2009 conference in Burlingame. We’ll have more discussion of the implications of Tropo, but suffice it to say that, consistent with its long-term strategy, Voxeo is offering a free service to voice application developers to take advantage of a standard set of API’s and a growing range of “frameworks” for the application community to build more voice and telephony applications in the cloud, what it refers to as “API-based” applications.
Nuance [Finally] Sounds its Zi
The prospects for more convenient entry of text messages around the world became more real as Nuance Communications and Canada’s Zi Technologies finally agreed to terms whereby Nuance will acquire Zi for a combination of $17 million in cash and another $18 million worth of Nuance common stock. The price represents a 73% premium over Zi’s Friday closing share price on the Toronto Stock Exchange. However it is $5 million less than Nuance had offered for the company roughly one month ago.
Amazon’s Evocative Access to “Public Data”
Amazon.com continues to enhance its cloud-based platform for electronic commerce (EC2) with bells, whistles and data designed to inspire developers to augment Web-based offerings . Last night the company added over a Terabyte of information that are snapshots of “Public Data Sets” designed as a central repository for publicly available information that can be a boon to any cloud computing strategy.
Singapore Emerging as a Focal Point for Voice Biometrics
A couple of recent announcements have brought a spotlight to Singapore as an emerging hub for voice biometrics applications being deployed throughout Asia.
According to an article at Straits Times, the Singapore airport authority is considering using voiceprints as a way of authenticating travelers. Singapore passengers currently interact with thumb and iris identification devices, but voice biometrics offers the advantage of remote authentication when verifying someone’s identity compared to a database of voiceprints. Still, some skeptics wonder how the system would work to identify those passengers who don’t have a voiceprint on record.
Elsewhere, PerSay has announced a new go-to-market partner with Singapore-based INS Indriya, a technology consulting firm focused on voice applications and CRM solutions.
“The partnership with INS Indriya will provide our customers and prospects in Singapore and Asia with a local center of excellence and competence around the PerSay products,” said Ariel Freidenberg, Executive VP of Global Sales at PerSay, in a statement.
In Asia, PerSay currently names YeSpeech as a partner in providing mobile banking services in Korea and the AC Corporation is a partner at GSIS – the Philippines primary pension program who has deployed a voice biometric system to allow its more than 1.2 million members secure access to pension services over the phone.
The Collaborator’s Dilemma
Today UC is getting all the attention because it is a broad product area that fits into the marketing plans of major software vendors – especially Microsoft and IBM (who lead in conferencing and collaboration). But the process of ‘unifying communications’ alone is not nearly as promising as building better ways to support person-to-person, person-to-machine and machine-to-machine conversations and today’s measurement of the UC market will always underestimate the value of (and spending on) these endeavors.
EU Funded LUNA Project Receives More Funding
We’re three years into the LUNA Project, designed to bring better man-to-machine communications to Italy, France and Poland. As described in this article in the European Research Headlines Web the LUNA project has received government grants amountoing to EUR 2.61 million in funding, all aimed at providing a more pleasant customer experience when people have to talk to machines over the telephone.
VoiceVault Readies Voice Offerings for Texas State Government Agencies
VoiceVault, in a partnership with Austin Biometrics, has completed negotiations with the state of Texas to offer voice biometrics solutions to any state government agency. According to the agreement, VoiceVault has been awarded a GoDIRect contract paving the way for any Texas government agency the ability to order product offerings.
The offerings, which are billed as-a-service, include VoiceTrack, a phone-based time-and-attendance solution; password reset capabilities; caller authentication and VoiceVault’s Advanced Electronic Signatures service. Under the new agreement, according to VoiceVault VP of North America Julia Webb, the company’s voice biometrics services could be used by state agencies as payment verification for everything from recording taxes, benefits, and other payment solutions. According to Webb, the state of Texas government had become aware of and interested in voice biometrics to support home-based detention.
Webb also mentioned the continuing roll-out of its voice signature service for Wellpoint is now being deployed in 17 states, with Texas and California next on the list. Internal monitoring by VoiceVault, says Webb, is showing a rate of 1000-1,500 voice signatures being added every day. The voice signature service is intended to help insurance providers reduce costs in lowering agent time and expediting the process to complete applications.
What was that Microsoft Mobile Speech App? Oh, yeah! Recite
On the eve for the GSMA Mobile World Congress, Microsoft has made a “speech search” application called Microsoft Recite available for smartphones running the Windows Mobile 6.0 and higher. Among speech-enabled mobile search applications, Microsoft Recite is neither fish nor fowl, and whether it’s a pure red meat application could be up for debate.
Aspect to World: “UC Changes Everything”
I listened to a replay of Aspect’s Sr. Vice President of Strategy Mike Sheridan’s Webinar for industry analysts. Aside from imparting surprisingly good news about revenues in the final quarter, the biggest take-away was Aspect’s unswerving commitment to Unified Communications in general and Microsoft’s flavor of UC specifically. The former means that Aspect expects to transcend the confines of the contact center and go enterprise-wide. The latter signals that its approach is deeply integrated with Microsoft’s .Net architecture as well as sales of Exchange Server, Active Directory and (oh yeah!) Office Communications Server 2007 R2, which includes OCS Voice for SIP-based call handling and the vestiges of Microsoft SpeechServer, called its “Developer Edition.”