Genesys Honors Application Developers at G-Force 2004

SAN FRANCISCO - Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories Inc., a subsidiary of Alcatel (ALA) announced the winners of the "Genesys Voice Idol 2004" application developer contest. The contest, held at Genesys' annual G-Force user conference, provided an opportunity for the company's large ecosystem of developer partners to showcase the robust speech self-service applications they built on the industry-leading Genesys Voice Platform. Apptera, NetByTel and Unveil Technologies were the three category finalists, with Unveil named as the ultimate "Genesys Voice Idol 2004."

Contestants in the Voice Idol competition demonstrated their application(s) in front of a panel of industry expert judges including Art Schoeller, Yankee Group; Zach Kaiman, Datamonitor; John Kelly, Speech Technology Magazine; and Genesys customers including 1-800-Flowers, Mutual of Omaha and First Data Corporation. Entrants competed in any one or all three industry categories: financial services and healthcare; telecommunications, government and utilities; and horizontal applications such as messaging, status and locator. Entries were judged on a number of criteria including business benefits to enterprises, such as return on investment, usability and likelihood of adoption; and technical innovation, ease of deployment and use of speech.

Unveil Technologies, the financial services and healthcare category winner, was chosen 2004 Genesys Voice Idol based on the innovativeness, robust nature and benefits of its Conversation Manager™ application. Unveil virtual agents employ conversational speech recognition technology and a proprietary meaning recognition engine to automate a broader set of customer interactions and learn dynamically from live calls to reduce the total cost of speech ownership while improving customer satisfaction and agent efficiency.

Apptera won in the telecommunications, government and utilities category for its appointment reminder application. NetByTel's Service Scheduler, an application used by consumers to arrange for service on home appliances, was the horizontal application winner.

Genesys partners IBM and ScanSoft were official sponsors of the Genesys Voice Idol event.