Intervoice Releases Voice Portal 5

Intervoice, Inc. today announced the availability of Intervoice Voice Portal 5 (IVP 5), with significant new benefits for customers of all sizes. Among the features is Multi-Channel Outbound Notification which includes SMS, email and voice alerts that provide real-time notification of time-sensitive account events, emergencies and transactions. With this version either Nuance or IBM is available for speech recognition, text-to-speech and speaker identity verification. In addition to addressing large enterprise needs for a highly scalable solution, IVP 5 is also available in an all-in-one configuration for small to midsize enterprises. [click heading for more]

EMBARQ Calls on Holly Connects for Voice Application Deployment

Embarq Corporation has selected Holly Connects to supply its Holly Voice Platform as the foundation for the forthcoming enhanced subscriber services. [click heading for more]

Customers in Romania? Have Them Speak to 'Carmen'

There is now help available for Romanian-serving contact centres. ‘Her’ name is Carmen. ‘She’ is the first high quality synthetic Romanian-language voice and ‘works’ in IVONA Telecom TTS speech recognition application, developed and marketed by IVO Software, which is based in Poland. Carmen joins her ‘friends’, Jacek and Ewa who can talk to Polish-speaking callers, and who were the first members of the IVONA Telecom TTS ‘family’, along with Jennifer, who can converse with Americans . [click heading for more]

TelcoBridges' Tmedia and Interact's SPOT Enable Creation of High-Capacity CCXML/VXML Solution

TelcoBridges™ Inc., today announced that Interact Incorporated Software Systems has integrated TelcoBridges' award-winning Tmedia telecom platform into its SPOT CCXML/VXML interpreter set. Using SPOT and TelcoBridges' telecom platform, operators worldwide can deliver IVR and conferencing services simultaneously on thousands of call channels, whether TDM or VoIP, within a familiar standards-based development environment.
Interact provides high performance telecommunication solutions for operators and enterprises throughout 28 countries around the globe. Interact's new CCXML/VXML interpreter set - called SPOT - leverages TelcoBridges' technology to improve VoiceXML performance, eliminate CPU and memory limitations caused by traditional VXML solutions, and provide no loss of service-no loss of calls application server redundancy. [click heading for more]

G-Force Delegates Experience SpeechStorm’s Outbound Speech Technology First Hand

SpeechStorm, (www.speechstorm.com) has today announced that it worked with its key partner, Genesys, to deliver an Outbound Speech notification to G-Force delegates which gave details of the welcome reception held last night. This outbound call, powered by SpeechStorm, proactively welcomed delegates, asked them if were planning to attend the welcome reception and based on their spoken response, advised them of the time and location of the welcome reception.SpeechStorm’s Outbound Speech technology gives organisations more than simple outbound notifications; it also allows them to interact with the customer to instigate and complete transactions such as insurance policy renewal notifications, outstanding bill payments and conducting questionnaires etc. These reminders or notifications significantly enhance a contact centres’ customer service programme, directly improving the customer experience and at a fraction of the cost of live agents. [click heading for more]

LumenVox Speech Engine Achieves Compliance with BroadSoft’s BroadWorks® Platform

LumenVox today announced that it has achieved interoperability validation of its Speech Engine on the BroadSoft BroadWorks® VoIP application platform. BroadSoft's application software enables service providers to deliver hosted PBX, mobile PBX and SIP and IP business trunking services.

BroadSoft’s service provider customers can now use speech recognition technology in conjunction with BroadWorks for enhanced customer service and better business efficiency. [click heading for more]

“You can have the best scanner in the world, but if there is no report, it is worthless”

In a recent interview with AuntMinnie Radiology magazine, Dr. Giles Boland, medical director of teleradiology and vice chairman of radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston, talks about the pressure Radiologists are facing when it comes to documentation.
The article starts off with a rather capitalistic - although realisitic- view of the 21st century reading room: “radiologists today are measured constantly, whether it is in the number of images they read, their relative value unit (RVU) activity, or their report turnaround times.” Not only that. ”You can get three different radiologists to look at the same scan and they can give very different lengths and styles of interpretations,” Boland continues. “How is a referring physician to navigate through those variable styles?”
"The advantage of voice recognition is that it may be counterintuitive because if radiologists have to edit that report, they naturally will shorten the number of words they put in it. They don’t want to edit a report that is five pages long." [click heading for more]

The Paisley Group’s NDA Performance IndexSM Finds

Over the past twelve months, user paid directory assistance (DA) providers performed at levels that are almost as high as statistically possible, making the United States’ DA service “the best of the best.”
There are three components that drive the accuracy of DA: the automated front-end systems, the operators and the databases. According to the National Directory Assistance Performance IndexSM, an independent analysis published semi-annually by The Paisley Group, Ltd. (PGL), automated systems are performing at 98.7% accuracy, operators at 98.3% accuracy and databases at 95.0% accuracy resulting in 91.0% of all calls being handled accurately. The margin of error is +/- 3.2%. [click heading for more]

Nuance Communications' Loss Widens

Nuance Communications' second-quarter revenue surpassed the Street's expectations, but expenses soared, expanding the company's loss.
Revenue at the speech-recognition software developer was up 63% to $219.9 million, including deferred revenue lost to accounting from several acquisitions, from a top line of $134.6 million for the same quarter of last year. Analysts were expecting revenue of $214.3 million, according to Thomson Reuters.
The Burlington, Mass., company posted a loss of $28.8 million, or a loss of 13 cents a share, as the expense of hosting subscription-based software services more than doubled. [click heading for more]

The Ultimate Mashup: Web 2.0 & Next-Gen Telecom Application Servers

The stunning success of Web 2.0 applications is forcing telecom service providers around the world to speed up their next-gen service plans, leading to the deeper integration of Web-based technologies with telecom application servers, according to a major new report from Heavy Reading (www.heavyreading.com), the research division of Light Reading (www.lightreading.com).

The Ultimate Mashup: Web 2.0 & Next-Gen Telecom Application Servers examines the effect of Web services on next-generation telecom application servers, identifying the techniques, protocols, and hardware configurations that network operators must include in their purchasing criteria. The report profiles and analyzes 28 leading suppliers of Web and telecom application servers, assessing their products, development plans, and technology strategies.

The Ultimate Mashup: Web 2.0 & Next-Gen Telecom Application Servers includes a case study of the BT 21st-Century Network (21CN) initiative to capture the strategies, decision points, and variables BT considered in plotting its transition strategy. The 67-page report provides a complete and detailed view of the emerging next-gen application server market, including:

• The evolution path of the telecom application server and the most likely future course for application servers
• The challenges network operators face in delivering Web 2.0 services, including the impact of alternative carriers such as Vonage and Skype
• An assessment of the relevant application program interfaces (APIs) and programming languages used by application servers
• An analysis of the various types of application servers, the services they enable, and their functional roles as detailed in industry standards
• An evaluation of Telco 2.0 and Web 2.0 services integration
• A detailed competitive analysis of the products, overall vision, market strategies, and long-term prospects of next-gen application server technology suppliers

"After more than a decade of parallel development as clearly defined separate entities, Web servers and telecom application servers are now becoming much more closely aligned," says Jim Hodges, senior analyst with Heavy Reading and author of the report. "The momentum of Web 2.0 services is driving this closer relationship. For example, it is now possible to purchase, from vendors such as IBM and BEA, combined SIP and HTTP Web servers that from a hardware perspective represent a converged telecom/Web application server."

One factor that is preventing a faster convergence of Web 2.0 and application server technologies is the reluctance of vendors on both sides to compete head on, Hodges notes. "Both sides recognize that their skill sets are not as well suited to competing in different markets, and the R&D costs are prohibitive – meaning that telecom vendors will not develop Web servers and Web vendors will not develop telephony features," he explains. "Still, this separation is showing clear signs of dissolution, such as the decision by Web vendor Oracle to internally develop telecom features to support VOIP and Virtual PBX applications."

Other key findings of The Ultimate Mashup: Web 2.0 & Next-Gen Telecom Application Servers include the following:

• The success of the Web 2.0 business model is motivating application server providers to integrate more Web 2.0-type capabilities into their platforms. Vendors delivering new application servers with Web 2.0 features include Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Nokia Siemens, Nortel Networks, and Sonus.
• Hardware differentiation among telecom application servers is now virtually meaningless. Most suppliers of telecom application servers have migrated to commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) server configurations, such as BladeCenter T, which are essentially carrier-grade Web servers. This means vendors have relinquished the ability to differentiate products at a hardware level. Telecom application server vendors are shifting their focus to delivery of high-quality modular software that maximizes the scaleability of the base platform. Accordingly, while telecom vendors such as Genband and Avaya sell software-only solutions today, at least one major vendor is considering the adoption of this approach in the second half of 2008.
• Renewed interest by major vendors in the development of application server products will likely lead to further consolidation among suppliers. The consolidation and rationalization that occurred in 2007, with the merger of Aepona and Appium and the acquisition of Ubiquity by enterprise-based Avaya, will continue apace. The most notable move this year has been Oracle's announced acquisition of BEA.