<A> (interesting corollary topic) IBM Brings the Power of Speech Technology to Telephony Through Partnership with Voice Control Systems SOMERS, N.Y. and DALLAS--
Strategic Alliance Enables Businesses to Provide Improved Automated Customer Service Over the Telephone at a Lower Cost
IBM (NYSE:IBM), a world leader in speech recognition software, today announced a partnership with Voice Control Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:VCSI), a leading supplier of speech recognition software for telecommunications -- accelerating the adoption of speech-driven telephony solutions by businesses. By marrying the power of advanced speech recognition with the telephone, businesses can provide automated services at a lower cost and can improve satisfaction by freeing their customers from the endless maze of keypad-driven menus, letting them use their voices to access information more quickly and easily.
As IBM's primary path to market, VCS will deliver this technology for telephony applications to interactive voice response (IVR) and messaging/voice mail vendors. IBM will provide business partners and developers with large vocabulary speech engines and tools, based on its industry-leading, high accuracy, continuous speech recognition software, ViaVoice (1). Through this agreement, business partners and developers will also have access to the speech engines currently available in VCS' SpeechWave (2) software, which delivers continuous digits and medium vocabulary phonetic speech recognition. IBM and VCS will also provide training and application development support.
IBM and VCS will deliver a range of speech-enabled telephony solutions through developers and business partners. VCS will integrate both IBM and VCS technologies into integrated voice response, and voice mail and messaging platforms, which will facilitate the development of applications.
These telephony solutions will range from low-end applications for simple inquiries to high-end solutions for complex transactions. Many businesses, including financial institutions, travel and hospitality firms, telephone companies and call centers, will be able to work more efficiently and provide more customized, faster service by offering an alternative to the phone keypad and limited speech solutions that often leave customers frustrated.
"With years of expertise in speech technology and the retail success of our ViaVoice products, IBM is moving forward to bring the power of speech recognition technology to the enterprise," said W.S. (Ozzie) Osborne general manager of IBM Speech Systems. "Teaming with VCS enables us to speed the proliferation of the most innovative speech-driven telephony solutions in businesses around the globe."
Engines, Tools and Application Modules to Build Telephony Business Solutions
To make speech-enabled telephony more pervasive in today's businesses, IBM will offer a new speech engine, IBM ViaVoice Telephony Run Time, available in the third quarter of 1998. An updated version of this engine, with IBM Natural Language Understanding (NLU) Support, will be available in the fourth quarter of 1998. In conjunction with the new engine, IBM will offer its ViaVoice Telephony Tools that allow developers to create speech-enabled applications. IBM will also provide application modules that will model
customized telephony applications and solutions including stock and mutual fund trading, an auto-attendant application, and phone banking.
This powerful IBM technology, combined with VCS' speech software and channel partner relationships in the telephony industry, will help build a global market for speech-enabled telephony solutions. The goal is to create a larger customer base for speech technology, applications, and integration services.
"This partnership will define the market standard for speech-based telephony solutions and increase deployment in the marketplace," said Peter Foster, president and CEO of Voice Control Systems. "IBM and VCS share a common vision of delivering breakthrough speech recognition technology and applications to corporate users. Based on the strength of VCS' products and distribution channels, combined with the addition of IBM's natural language and large vocabulary capabilities, speech recognition is poised for prime time."
Industry Support is Strong in a Hot Market
The IBM and VCS partnership is already gaining support from leading business partners including Brite Voice Systems, InterVoice, Inc., Dialogic Corp., Natural MicroSystems, and IBM DirectTalk. IBM and VCS will continue to look for strategic relationships with industry-leading application development partners to deliver telephony solutions to businesses.
"There is already a ground swell of support for what IBM and VCS are doing in the telephony space," said Harry Newton, a leading industry analyst.
"In 1997 we saw speech dictation make its mark in the marketplace, and with this alliance, it looks like 1998 will be the year of speech recognition in computer telephony applications."
The speech recognition market is cited by many analysts as the single largest area for growth in the telecommunications industry. According to Tern Systems, Inc., the speech-enabled telephony market was estimated to reach $245 million in revenue for 1997. Tern expects the industry to grow to $809 million in revenue for 2001.
Voice Control Systems
Voice Control Systems (VCS) is a leading speech software platform provider offering vocabularies in over 50 languages with more than 2.5 million recognizors, including 500,000 in telecom, installed in 30 countries.
Speech-driven applications using VCS products are used today in telecommunications, automotive, consumer electronics, and interactive multimedia software to enable computers and electronic devices to understand and process human speech. VCS is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, with regional offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Portsmouth, England. The company's stock is traded on the NASDAQ National Market System under the symbol VCSI. For more information, visit the company's web site at voicecontrol.com.
IBM
IBM set the industry standard for speech recognition software when it launched the VoiceType family of products. With more than 25 years of research in the field, the company has built a team of speech recognition specialists worldwide, dedicated to the development, support, marketing, and sale of IBM speech solutions in many languages. For more information about IBM Speech Systems, visit the World Wide Web at ibm.com.
(1) IBM and ViaVoice are trademarks or registered trademarks of
International Business Machines Corporation.
(2) SpeechWave is a trademark of Voice Control Systems, Inc.
References to products or offerings do not necessarily imply that IBM or VCS intend to make these products or offerings available in every country in the world. |
