Nuance Unveils New Speech Recognition Products to Meet the Rangeof Customer Self-Service Requirements
Nuance 6.2 Enables Advanced V-Commerce and Telecommunications Transactions
Nuance Express Offers Proven Accuracy and Reliability
in a Low-cost Package for Entry-level Systems
MENLO PARK, Calif., Feb. 22 /PRNewswire/ -- Nuance Communications, the leading provider of speech recognition software for V-Commerce(TM) and telecommunications transactions, today announced Nuance 6.2, an upgrade to its award-winning, scaleable, natural language speech recognition server and Nuance Express(TM), a new low-cost offering built on the same core technology. The two products provide, for the first time, a seamless migration path from an entry-level speech system to a more advanced, natural language understanding application.
The new functionality in Nuance 6.2 is essential for enabling advanced V-Commerce, or voice-enabled e-commerce, and telecommunications transactions. It features tight integration with Nuance Verifier, which authenticates callers using voice prints. This integration provides transaction security with a seamless user experience. For less complex, entry-level applications, Nuance Express enables low-cost, rapid speech application development by programmers with little or no speech expertise. Both products are based on the industry's leading speech technology which provides proven recognition accuracy, a scaleable distributed client/server architecture and support for multiple languages. Customers interact with deployed Nuance systems over one million times per day.
"With the addition of Nuance Express and Nuance 6.2 to our product line, we now offer products to meet the range of customer needs from the entry-level to the next generation of V-Commerce," said Ronald Croen, president and CEO of Nuance Communications. "We expect the new offerings to extend Nuance's leadership position in the enterprise market and open up new opportunities for entry-level systems for us."
Nuance 6.2 For Advanced V-Commerce and Telecommunications Applications
Nuance 6.2's full feature set makes it possible to build advanced applications. The natural language understanding engine enables users to have natural, conversational interactions with systems that support large vocabularies and complex transactions. Nuance 6.2 also offers:
Secure Transactions
Nuance 6.2 includes tight integration with Nuance Verifier, a speaker verification product that creates and analyzes a caller's voiceprint. The combination of the two technologies ensures a level of user convenience and security that was previously unattainable. Users are recognized and authenticated simultaneously so that when they say their name, for example, their identity is verified at the same time. This shortens the overall call duration and also eliminates the need for users to remember PIN numbers.
Open Standards-Based APIs
Nuance 6.2 includes Java and ActiveX application programming interfaces (APIs). These APIs enable developers to build speech applications using the languages and readily available Java and Visual Basic(TM) development environments with which they are already familiar. These APIs facilitate easy integration with standards-based e-commerce servers and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) platforms. They also support Nuance SpeechObjects(TM), a set of reusable components for rapid development of speech recognition applications.
Single Phrase Correction
Nuance 6.2 improves the overall user experience through a technique known as single phrase correction. If a single phrase in a long utterance is not recognized, the application can prompt the user to restate only that phrase, instead of the whole sentence, thus saving time and minimizing frustration.
Personalization
To provide a more convenient user experience, Nuance 6.2 enables callers to personalize applications on-the-fly. For example, in a bill payment application, a user may set up their credit card provider as a payee by speaking the card type, bank name and account number, along with a personalized word to avoid reentering the information in the future. The convenience and simplicity of this functionality is extremely useful in applications such as voice-activated dialers, personal assistants, and personalized stock portfolios.
Significant Performance Enhancements
Enhancements to the core Nuance recognition algorithms provide up to a 40% improvement in processing efficiency. This enables systems to be deployed with less hardware and significantly reduces the cost of ownership. These algorithm enhancements also increase system accuracy. With Nuance 6.2, accuracy rates on live systems will approach 97%.
"We were very impressed with the new features and the performance of Nuance 6.2 during our testing," said Alex McAllister, manager of technical development for Bell Atlantic Federal. "The Java API will allow us to build applications using familiar tools and the tight integration of Nuance Verifier will be of significant importance to future products."
Nuance Express Enables Entry-level Speech Applications
Nuance Express offers the proven accuracy, reliability, and scalability of Nuance 6.2 in a low-cost package for entry-level applications. It is designed to enable less complex, menu-driven, systems that require a vocabulary of less than twenty items. Nuance Express is being supported by a wide range of Nuance partners including Aspect Telecommunications Corporation, Brite Voice Systems, Inc., Edify Corporation, Periphonics Corporation and Syntellect, Inc. Highlights of Nuance Express include:
Three Low-cost Offerings
Base Package
Nuance Express ships with ready-to-use broad yes/no and digit grammars and is available for only $250 per concurrent user. Broad yes/no support ensures that system users can reply to a yes/no question with a range of expressions such as "yes," "yup," "sure," "ok," "nope," "no way," etc. and still be understood. The digit grammar supports recognition of single digits from 0 to 9.
Alphanumeric Package
Enables recognition of alphanumeric strings in addition to the broad yes/no and digit support of the Base Package. An example of such a string is "154Z8BG698."
20 Item Package
Enables recognition of any 20 customizable items in addition to the broad yes/no and digit support of the Base Package. The 20 items may include discrete words or phrases such as "balance," "reserve flight," "order status," etc.
Rapid System Development
The ready-to-use packaged grammars described above enable rapid application development. They also allow programmers with no prior speech experience to develop applications with little or no training.
Seamless and Cost-effective Upgrade to Nuance 6.2
Nuance provides a seamless and cost effective upgrade path for a customer looking to start with an entry-level speech recognition system built on Nuance Express and then gradually migrate to a more sophisticated, larger vocabulary, system based on Nuance 6.2. Developers only need to learn one API set and application development environment. More complex application components can easily be added to an entry-level system as required. Since Nuance Express and Nuance 6.2 share the same core speech engine, installation of a new speech recognition server is not needed, and a credit towards complete Nuance 6.2 functionality is available on upgrade.
Pricing and Availability Nuance 6.2 is available immediately either directly from Nuance or through an authorized Nuance partner. Development toolkits are available for $5,000 per user while deployment licenses start at $3,000, and are priced according to the complexity and capacity of the application. Nuance Express is available through an authorized Nuance partner with prices starting at $250 per concurrent user. Both products are available for Windows NT, Sun Solaris, IBM AIX, SCO Unix and Digital Unix and support leading IVR and telephony platforms. A listing of Nuance partners is available on the Web at nuance.com.
About V-Commerce
V-Commerce enables anybody who is away from a computer to reap the benefits of electronic commerce using natural language speech recognition. V-Commerce applications will typically include e-commerce and application servers, packaged applications and telephony hardware and software. For more information, see the V-Commerce Web site at v-commerce.com or try out V-Commerce applications at 1-877-TRY-VCOM.
About Nuance Communications
Nuance Communications provides enterprise-level speech recognition and speaker verification software to automate V-Commerce and telecommunications transactions. Users interact with deployed Nuance systems over one million times per day using everyday conversational language. The company's target markets include the travel, financial services, and telecommunications industries. Nuance's products support a variety of languages including U.S. English, U.K. English, Australian English, German, Japanese and Latin American Spanish. Nuance was named one of Upside's Hot 100 Private Companies and Red Herring's Top 50 Privately Held Companies. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California and maintains subsidiaries and offices in France, Germany and the United Kingdom. For more information, see Nuance's Web site at nuance.com or call (650) 847-0000.
Nuance, Nuance Express, SpeechObjects and V-Commerce are trademarks of Nuance Communications. All other trademarks of properties of their respective shareholders.
SOURCE Nuance Communications
CO: Nuance Communications
ST: California
IN: CPR
SU: PDT
02/22/99 10:10 EST prnewswire.com
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