Microsoft and Intervoice Create Sales, Marketing and Technology Alliance

REDMOND, WA and DALLAS, TX - Microsoft Corp. and Intervoice Inc. announced a strategic alliance that will make open, standards-based speech solutions more accessible to Web developers and enterprise customers. Seeking to make speech technology mainstream, the two companies will engage in sales, marketing and technology development for the upcoming Microsoft .NET Speech platform, a Speech Application Language Tags (SALT)-based solution that will make it faster, easier and more economical for customers to develop and deploy large-scale enterprise telephony and multimodal speech-enabled applications, such as interactive voice response (IVR), customer relationship management (CRM) or enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications. "This alliance signals a paradigm shift in the industry from proprietary systems to Web-based speech solutions that are based on open standards and leverage new and existing Web investments," said Brian Strachman, a senior analyst with In-Stat/MDR. "Microsoft's speech technologies are making it faster and easier than ever before for developers and enterprises to extend their Web investments with speech. Through its support of the Microsoft .NET Speech platform, Intervoice will be able to provide its customers with greater flexibility and choice, as well as increased productivity, cost savings, a high return on investment and valuable new business opportunities." Under the terms of the agreement, the parties will have a strategic alliance in which Intervoice will deliver and deploy SALT, ASP.NET and Microsoft .NET Speech platform-based applications. In addition, Intervoice will integrate its telephony call management technologies with the Microsoft .NET Speech platform and will port its packaged and vertical applications to SALT to be operable on the Microsoft .NET Speech platform. These technologies and solutions will be made available to Microsoft and Intervoice customers, business partners and application developers. The two companies also will focus on delivering ASP.NET and SALT-based speech solutions to enterprise customers in a range of industries that use or could benefit from IVR technology, in addition to new industries or applications that have not been traditional targets for speech enablement. As part of this cooperative effort, Intervoice will develop tools that are compatible with the .NET Speech platform. Further, the two companies will engage in joint promotion of the Microsoft .NET Speech Software Development Kit (SDK), a set of SALT-based speech application development tools and speech controls released by Microsoft in May. To date, thousands of Web developers have begun using the Microsoft .NET Speech SDK Version 1.0 beta. "Intervoice shares Microsoft's vision for the broad deployment and adoption of SALT-based telephony and multimodal speech applications among developers, enterprise customers, telecommunication service providers and end users," said Bob Ritchey, president of Intervoice. "This relationship represents the dedication of both Intervoice and Microsoft to the innovation and deployment of first-class technology. Intervoice is proud to support the SALT-based Microsoft .NET Speech platform as its preferred telephony and multimodal solution." "Intervoice excels at giving customers the speech applications and solutions they need to take advantage of revolutionary new business opportunities and stay ahead of the competition," said Kai-Fu Lee, vice president of the Natural Interactive Services Division at Microsoft. "Relationships such as the one we've announced today between industry leaders Intervoice and Microsoft are critical for making speech technology available to a broad customer base, including IVR and call center vendors, and expanding the ecosystem that will make speech a mainstream feature of Web applications."