Speech Joins Computer Telephony Boom

Computer telephony has become one of the hottest applications for speech recognition, with many companies producing products specifically for the CT market and one major speech recognition company even changing its entire company focus to pursue the CT market.

In December, Dialogic began offering its software development kits (SDKs) free of charge so that developers could break into this lucrative market. The company offers free SDKs to enable developers to get started for as little as $395 with the purchase of a Dialogic ProLine 2V or $495 with the purchase of a GammaFax CPI/100.

Why? According to Patty Nozato, product marketing engineer with Dialogic, the move confirms Dialogic's commitment "to helping network developers succeed in the growing telephony market by easing their entry."

Dialogic has also begun using Voice Control Systems' speech recognition on its Antares platform for UNIX based applications.

A more significant development occurred early this year when one of the pioneers of speech recognition has recently shifted their business focus away from consumer PC-based products toward "high volume telephony."

PureSpeech, Inc., of Cambridge, MA, recognizing the recent increase in the adoption of speech technology in telephony applications, has established a new business unit and added several key executives to make the shift.

The company has also established partnerships with Customer Management Automation (CMA), Dialogic Corporation, Sun MicroSystems, and Voicetek Corp. to deliver complete speech-enabled computer telephony (CT) solutions.

The partnership with CMA, announced in December, is intended to develop speech enabled products for the Sun MicroSystems platform.

Besides the explosive demand for telephony solutions, PureSpeech was motivated by the success of their ReCite products in the CT markets, and the higher interest in PureSpeech-delivered application consulting services for the rapid development and deployment of speech-enabled applications. ReCite products are involved in large vocabulary, speaker-independent continuous speech recognition applications.

PureSpeech will focus on meeting the needs of the high call volume markets by fully leveraging its proven experience in delivering speech products to the consumer market. As a result, the Consumer PC OEM division is being spun off, so that all of PureSpeech's resources are being applied to address the speech requirements of the high volume telephony customers.

Management Changes

"We are well poised to become the new leader with our vision, new focus and new senior management team," said Benjamin Chigier, president of PureSpeech.

Jamie Goldstein has been named vice president of Strategic Business Development and Application Services, the business unit that will focus on providing application consulting services to PureSpeech customers. "This change in management will allow PureSpeech to clearly carry out our mission to be customer focused and demonstrate our commitment to ensure our customers' success," Chigier explained.

Carol Mazuy joins PureSpeech as the new vice president of marketing. "Carol brings to PureSpeech over 20 years of marketing, management and organizational development experience in fast paced, high-growth environments," said Chigier.

Rene Thibault is the new vice-president of sales at PureSpeech. "Rene's intimate understanding of the competitive challenges facing the telecommunications industry today will be invaluable in ensuring that our products will continue to meet our customers critical requirements," said Chigier. Thibault had previously been the vice president of sales at Centigram Communications Corp.

Richard Waltz has joined PureSpeech as the vice president and chief financial officer, (CFO) assuming all responsibilities for finance and administration.

Some other signs of the CT boom follow:

Wal-Mart Licenses Speech Recognition
Voice Control Systems, and MediaSoft Telecom Inc., recently announced the integration of VCS’ speech recognition technology within MediaSoft’s multi award winning “IVS Builder/Server” application generator toolkit and runtime platform.

Among the companies using the product are Wal-Mart and Colombia’s state-owned telephone company.

Wal-Mart is evaluating how using speech recognition over the phone can be used for future IVR projects. ITEC-TELECOM, Colombia’s state-owned telephone company, is building an information retrieval systems based on speech recognition.

Further information is available at these web sites: http://www.media.soft.com, or http://www.voicecontrol.com or http://www.vpro.com

DSP Research releases VIPER
DSP Research recently announced the release of its VIPER-12, a high density MVIP DSP resource board for computer telephony and telecommunications infrastructure applications. TheVIPER-12 is intended for applications such as wireless and cellular base stations, remote access servers, satellite base stations and voice/modem/facsimile over ATM/Frame Relay.

For more information, contact
DSP Research, 1095 E. Duane Ave., Suite 203, Sunnyvale, CA 94086
by Email: info@dspr.com
or on their home page: http://www.dspr.com

Vpro on Antares
Dialogic Corp., a leading manufacturer of standards-based computer telephony components, recently announced it has started shipping Voice Control Systems’ Vpro Speech Recognition technology on Antares for SCO UNIX, broadening Dialogic’s existing portfolio of speech products running on the Antares DSP platform.

Vpro can be integrated into such applications as call centers, voice mail systems, interactive voice response units and voice activated dialing to reduce costs, enhance customer service and at times even increase safety.

The robust architecture of the Antares platform and the modularity of the Vpro package allow developers to build scalable solutions ranging from dual post nodes to high density speech recognition servers.

For more information, contact Athena Mandros at Dialogic Corp., 1515 Route Ten, Parsippany, NJ 07054
or at http://www.dialogic.com

Artisoft Ships Visual Voice Pro
Artisoft, Inc. recently announced that it is shipping Visual Voice Pro for Digital Alpha, a 32-bit ActiveX Control version of Artisoft’s award winning Visual Voice computer telephony development tool.

Designed for use with Digital Equipment Corporation’s AlphaServer Voice Platform, Visual Voice Pro runs on the Windows NT operating system and supports more than 72 simultaneous phone lines. It supports DSP-based voice boards from Dialogic Corporation, including the full range of SCSA compatible voice boards.

“Artisoft’s Visual Voice Pro combined with Digital’s Alpha Server provides a highly robust platform for telephony application development,” said Steve Manson, vice president of product marketing for Artisoft’s Computer Telephony Product Group.

For more information, contact Artisoft’s Computer Telephony Product Group, 5 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142
or on the web at http://www.artisoft.com/visualvoice