Nuance Unveils Complete Speech Solutions Approach

Nuance (unveiled new products and services aimed at increasing the business value of voice for customers worldwide. With these new offerings, Nuance is responding to the market demand for complete speech solutions that deliver maximum business benefits -- cost savings, increased customer satisfaction and potential new revenue from voice-driven services. These new offerings are designed to speed and ease system deployment and lower the total cost of ownership. New products include the Nuance Voice Platform, a standards-based software platform designed specifically for speech solutions, and pre-packaged voice applications to be delivered by a newly formed organization within the company. Additionally, new services from Nuance will include resources, training, and support to assist customers and partners in developing, delivering, and deploying successful speech solutions. "With nearly a decade of speech innovation under our belts and more than 750 customers, partners and customers have been looking to Nuance to play a broader role in the delivery of complete speech solutions to the market," said Ron Croen, president, CEO, and chairman, Nuance. "Customers can now turn to Nuance and our best-in-class community of partners for all of their speech needs." Nuance Voice Platform Nuance Voice Platform, which is scheduled for general release in Q1 of 2003, has been designed as a foundation upon which speech applications can be developed and deployed. It is an open, standards-based software platform that is optimized for speech, thus enabling the benefits of speech to be maximized. These include increased automation rates, improved customer satisfaction and faster return on investment from speech solutions. Nuance Voice Platform leverages the innovation and success of Nuance's earlier voice platform technologies. More than 200 companies in 24 countries use Voice Web Server, Nuance's first generation platform. Nuance Voice Platform supports VoiceXML 2.0 -- the open, industry standard for voice applications and services. Because VoiceXML is based on Web architectures, businesses using Nuance Voice Platform can leverage their existing IT staff expertise and Web infrastructure investments. In addition, Nuance Voice Platform runs on industry standard hardware, which could shave as much as 35 percent off of the hardware costs associated with speech system deployment. All of these capabilities combine to lower the overall cost of ownership of speech systems. Nuance Voice platform is optimized for the development and deployment of speech solutions. Integrated with Nuance's industry-leading speech technology, Nuance Voice Platform allows all of the latest capabilities of that technology to be readily accessible and available to customers. For example, Nuance Voice Platform provides customers access to the latest advances in speech recognition accuracy and human-sounding text-to-speech as well as technologies such as Nuance Say Anything(TM) (natural language technology), Speak as One(TM) (recorded prompt and text-to-speech smoothing technology), Accuburst(TM) (system optimization technology) Verifier(TM) (biometric voice authentication capabilities), and the patented Nuance Distributed Software Architecture. Nuance's pre-packaged applications will be unveiled in the first half of 2003. Both Nuance Voice Platform and Nuance's packaged speech applications will be available directly from Nuance and through a network of certified Platform VAR partners.