News February 3, 23:02 Eastern Time
FEB 3, 1999, M2 Communications - Lucent Technologies today announced a new division focused on the growing market for speech products in communications networks. The new unit, Lucent Speech Solutions, will deliver leading-edge speech recognition, personal agent technology, and text-to-speech synthesis for a wide range of customer applications, all based on industry-leading Bell Labs speech technology.
Offering the broadest range of speech products in the industry, Lucent Speech Solutions will provide solutions for communication service providers, desktop speech products for developers, and enterprise messaging solutions, call routing, and call transactions.
"Lucent Speech Solutions offers speech solutions that fit our customers' products, their customers' needs, and the way our customers do business. Speech is the interface for the next generation of networks, and represents a growing global market opportunity," said Dan Furman, president of Lucent Speech Solutions. "Consumer demand is increasing for speech applications that will not only help simplify their lives, but will be easy to use. The formation of Lucent Speech Solutions represents Lucent's focussed commitment to provide the technology and applications that will meet those needs. Lucent will be a major player in the speech market."
Lucent Speech Solutions also announced today a new Version of its industry-leading text-to-speech synthesis (TTS) platform, the Lucent TTS engine. And further expanding its line of speech products, the new Lucent division will soon introduce a compact PCI Speech Processing Board, a standards-based, high-density board that will make Bell Labs speech technology available on an increased number of platforms.
"Through Bell Labs, Lucent has been the leader in speech processing solutions for telephony and our products are the most widely used in the world," said Sid Ahuja, director. of the Multimedia Communications Research Laboratory at Bell Labs. "Lucent Speech Solutions provides a new unit which will allow Bell Labs to move into new application areas, and we expect to become the leader in these new markets."
Today's announcements are the latest in a series of recent announcements by Lucent asserting the company's commitment to speech. Yesterday, Lucent announced the Lucent Personal Assistant, which will provide a variety of call management functions, all using a natural language, voice-controlled user interface. Easier to use and costing less than previously available products of its kind, the Lucent Personal Assistant is the industry's first virtual assistant for the mass consumer market. The product will be offered on a service node and will be sold by Lucent's Communications Software business unit.
In December 1998, Lucent Speech Solutions announced a major channel alliance with Unisys for natural language speech products and a development partnership with Intel for next-generation handheld devices. In October, 1998, Lucent Speech Solutions announced that its Lucent Speech Server would be used by MovieFone, Inc. to allow natural language access to its automated movie and theatre database nationwide. In August, 1998, Lucent Speech Solutions delivered the Lucent Speech Application Platform, the company's first desktop software developer's kit (SDK) for the speech market. And in July 1998, Lucent introduced the new Lucent Speech Server, also announcing that Intellivoice Communications, Inc. would be deploying the product in Its advanced telephony products.
"Lucent Speech Solutions delivers the greatest depth and breadth of product in the speech marketplace, and our customers are helping us lead the next generation in speech development," said Eric E. Sumner, Jr., resident, New Ventures, with Lucent's Switching & Access business unit. "Speech is vital asset to any network-based product offering, and Lucent's Bell Labs heritage gives us a tremendous advantage in designing the future of this industry."
"Lucent is in position now to take greater advantage of its technical expertise in speech through the creation of Lucent Speech Solutions," said Bill Meisel, a leading speech technology analyst, and president of TMA, Associates. "We're glad to see this strategic move by Lucent in what is a dynamic market for speech products."
Lucent is a world leader in speech technologies. Essential Bell Labs patents in "barge.-in" and "key word spotting" have made natural language speech a reality for telephony applications. Lucent was the first company to develop speech recognition for a large network and has been developing speech applications for over a decade. More telephony users have access to Lucent's speech technology than to any other vendor's.
Lucent Speech Solutions' strength is its ability to provide hardware, software, and applications in end-to-end solutions for its customers.
The Lucent Speech Solutions division combines Lucent's speech development groups in Naperville, Illinois, and Bell Labs developers in Murray Hill, NJ. The new division will be part of Lucent's Switching and Access Systems business unit.
For more information about Lucent Speech Solutions, visit the Web site at www.lucent.com/speech. For product information, contact. cczekai@lucent.com or dianalocke@lucent.com.
Lucent Technologies, headquartered in Murray Hill, New Jersey, designs, builds and delivers a wide range of public and private networks, communications systems and software, data networking systems, business telephone systems and microelectronic components. Bell Labs is the research and development arm for the company. For more information on Lucent Technologies, visit our Web site at www.lucent.com.
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