Posts Tagged ‘speechtek’

This week insideCTI: 8/8/10 – 8/14/10

Need to catch up on this week’s posts on insideCTI? Allow me to do you a favor here and save you some clicking…

InsideCTI wrapped up the SpeechTEK 2010 coverage earlier this week with a climatic “Tidbits” post. Check out the photos all taken with the iPhone 4, which sadly doesn’t really work around Times Square. The highlight of the trip? Paying homage to Apple at its Fifth Ave. Store. Wait, I take that back — the highlight was definitely meeting all the good folks in person since we’d last seen each other at previous other conferences.

The 2600hz Project also came into the spotlight. Hooray for another open source telephony software project! Seriously, this world can never get enough of open source stuff. Thumbs up, guys!

I weighed in somewhat pessimistically on the Polycom-Microsoft partnership announcement. Let’s just say that I deemed the “F” in UCIF as something other than “Forum.” Is the world ready for Microsoft Communications Server “14″?

By far the biggest news to break this week was Voxeo acquiring Teleku. The news broke on the night of Wednesday, August 11 — I just happened to check Twitter that night, otherwise I would’ve missed it. Even its official press released specified August 12 as the announcement date. Voxeo continues its shopping spree — what’s next in the competitive Web/cloud telephony space?

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SpeechTEK: Tidbits

My dream was finally realized when I attended my first SpeechTEK in NYC last week. How about some nice NYC pictures first? My favorite? Mecca (aka Apple Store 5th Avenue). Yes, there are still people in line waiting on the iPad and iPhone 4.

For anyone in the contact center industry this conference has always been a big deal. It’s even more interesting when it was co-located with the CRM Evolution conference because I heard stories of people walking into the wrong sessions. Instead of learning speech technology, they were bombarded with social media stuff. Ha!

A couple of MIAs left conference goers scratching their heads. First, Salesforce.com decided not to be part of CRM Evolution. Funny thing is, I saw them at ACCE in New Orleans a few months ago, and that was a lesser known event. Denis Pombriant thought it was a mistake on their part to forgo attendance. I cannot pinpoint the reason behind Salesforce.com’s absence, but judging from its attendance in the earlier yet lesser known ACCE Conference, it’s probably not that it cannot afford CRM Evolution. Looking on its website the upcoming events are almost all overseas, which means Salesforce.com is pushing hard to expand into the Asian market. Is it because of the lethargic economy in the U.S.? Maybe it’s decided to focus on overseas markets where there’s at least better growth opportunities, and let its competitors undercut each other in the domestic market.

The other MIA at SpeechTEK was Nuance Communications, even though their marketing force was present. Of course, one good thing about being the market leader is that others will spread the gospel for you. I’m sure most exhibitors were tired of hearing, “Will your product work with Nuance?” throughout the show floor. So yeah, why spend the money for a booth.

So who did I think wasted their money? Probably Cisco. The Cisco booth was boring — it didn’t even have a proper Cisco logo — and the setup reminded me of a high school science fair. Whatever happened to the Cisco I saw at VoiceCon Orlando?! Only one word to describe Cisco’s SpeechTEK efforts: Meh.

West Interactive, having purchased Holly Connects and TuVox recently, decided not to incorporate their products at its booth demos. That was a shame. I think having Holly and TuVox represented at the booth would’ve been a good move. Unless, of course, there’s some turmoil and re-organization going on that prevented such an arrangement. I can’t say I was surprised when a source tipped me that most of TuVox management has been or will be let go.

To my surprise I also bumped into Tim Barnes, founder of OpenMethods, my former employer. We had a few minutes to catch up, and I’m just glad to see him all smiles. (And it wasn’t the wine.)

Ovum analyst Ian Jacobs was kind to spare a few minutes of his busy schedule to speak with me about his presentation at CRM Evolution: Location-based Info Points The Way to Mobile Customer Interactions. And judging from the writeup at DestinatioCRM.com, perhaps I’d be wise not to invite Ian to be my Foursquare friend… That’s quite okay, there are many other people (not really) who are interested in where I buy my 2% milk!

In the end, I think the two — okay, maybe three — companies that are going to make lots of splashes during the remainder of the year are: Angel, Voxeo, and RightNow Technologies. I’ve found these companies to be laser-focused in their perspective business segments; Angel and RightNow have even decided to rebrand themselves to deliver a clearer message.

For me it’s always exciting to meet with company representatives to learn about the latest products and services. But I must say that it’s even more valuable to re-connect with industry acquaintances and friends, and get their perspectives on what’s going on.

SpeechTEK: Catching up with Nu Echo

You may not have heard of Montreal-based Nu Echo, but that’s probably because you’re American. The company is well-known in Canada and boasts major customers there — Air Canada, RBC Financial, and Telus, just as a sampling. The company bills itself as speech experts and certainly has the DNA and projects to back up that claim.

Yves Normandin, CEO of Nu Echo, founded the company in 2002. Prior to that, he was founder and CTO of LocusDialog. Yes, that LocusDialog which was bought by ScanSoft which merged with Nuance. So if there’s anyone who knows speech — the technology and the business — it’s him.

The company firmly believes that speech technology has been wrongfully accused of damaging user experience. It has faith in speech technology because it knows it inside and out. Nu Echo’s expertise lies in developing tools and performance tuning to speech systems so that their full benefit is realized. Much like an automobile, a speech system requires regular maintenance to achieve its best performance.

Aside from professional services, Nu Echo has four distinct products: NuGram, NuBot, NuAddress, and NuID:

• NuGram – A complete grammar development platform, based on open source Eclipse framework.
• NuBot – Originally devised as an internal tool for testing, now productized as a hosted IVR application test solution. Monitoring features to come soon.
• NuAddress – The leading Canadian address capture solution in the industry, the result of over three years of R&D.
• NuID – An application to provide automated identity authentication, something that contact centers do every day. NuID is highly optimized and specialized just for this purpose and is able to achieve over 90% success rate.

The 20-person company is heavy on the developer side, so expect it to produce new tools and products regularly. The company advocates “test-driven development,” an approach that some other firms find hard to swallow (or willingly ignore). However, as Nu Echo’s track records have proven, this approach fits speech app development perfectly. Add on top Nu Echo’s obsession with performance tuning and monitoring, and you would get an ironclad speech app deployment.

Normandin is also eager to expand its business south of the border. So, my fellow Americans, prepare your speech systems for the invasion…

SpeechTEK: Nuance goes hosted, too

Nuance is a company that needs no introduction. It is a member of what I call “Big Speech,” which also includes Microsoft Tellme and Loquendo. However, Tellme still has some catching up to do in its enterprise reach, and Loquendo appears better received in European markets. But in the global enterprise market, Nuance enjoys dominance through its worldwide channel partners. It didn’t have a booth at SpeechTEK, but its presence was felt, not only because its marketing directors were hard at work meeting with media members, but the company name was mentioned numerous times during the sessions as well as overheard on the show room floor.

If you have an IVR, it’s very likely that it will work with Nuance speech products.

If you have a hosted IVR, Nuance can work too.

Dedicated speech servers are no longer needed — well, at least not on-premise in the enterprise. As with many other companies dealing with today’s sluggish economic environment, Nuance also has a hosted on-demand solution to help customers cut costs. The company has three PCI-compliant data centers to ensure service delivery and adequate security. Think of it as “speech in the cloud,” without the eavesdropping.

But what sets Nuance On Demand apart, according to Laura Marino (Sr. Director of Product Marketing) and Dena Skrbina (Sr. Director of Solutions Marketing), are the rich analytics features, also on-demand. The analytics offering is also tiered to provide advanced level reports based on a subscription charged by per-minute usage. One important point Marino brings up is that ROI is really gained by applying analytics. To be able to slice and dice the data gleaned from any technology is invaluable to the enterprise.

Enough about on demand solutions. Marino also shared news about SpeechAttendant 11, a niche on-premise product to provide enterprise enhanced auto attendant and directory services. With SpeechAttendant, Nuance wants to increase productivity by making the corporate directory more intelligent using its speech technology and applications. The product can list 400,000 names, searchable via natural language processing and multiple languages. It allows simple IVR-like menus to implement some level of business rules, and is equipped with telephony features such as call forwarding, emergency broadcasting, etc. An auto attendant in a box may not sound like a sexy product, but with the right technologies and interfaces it can indeed become an instrumental productivity tool.

SpeechTEK: Empirix promotes TaaS

If there’s something weird, and it don’t look good — Who ya gonna call? …GhostBusters!

That is, if you’re dealing with ghouls and ghosts. What if you just want to make sure the contact center project is adequately implemented to handle real-world loads?

Empirix Hammer is who you’d call, of course.

Most folks are familiar with the company and its flagship product, known for load/stress testing IVRs, CTI systems, and agent workstations. But as the contact center evolved to adopt technologies such as virtualization, VOIP, SIP, and cloud computing, Empirix found itself becoming more than just a Hammer company. For a SpeechTEK exhibitor without a speech product, Empirix was there to tout its comprehensive list of quality assurance products and services — for speech-enabled systems or otherwise.

Tim Moynihan, VP of Marketing for Contact Center Solutions, framed the situation: It’s all about the impact of data in today’s contact centers. Virtualization? Data. VOIP? Data. SIP trunking? Data. Cloud computing? Data. Just about any new technology being deployed in the contact center today floods the network with more data. So besides worrying about external loads to the contact center systems, what about the internal infrastructure supporting them? Are the LAN and WAN able to keep up with the data-intensive demands of the 2010 contact center?

Enter Empirix. When it advertises cradle-to-grave testing, it really means it regardless of the medium (TDM or IP). Add to it performance monitoring, such as its OneSight for Contact Centers, which actively measures voice quality in the enterprise to aide optimization and troubleshooting of networks. Or in the words of Bob Hockman, Director of Product Marketing, Empirix aims to “get it right and keep it right.”

And that’s much more important in today’s economic environment. The contact center is often a company’s first line of defense — and sometimes, offense — in the business world. Ensuring a well-oiled contact center can mean millions of dollars worth of savings. As Moynihan points out, testing shouldn’t be about firefighting; it ought to be strategic.

To make its offerings more attractive to enterprises of various sizes, Empirix now has a leasing program which its equipment will reside on-site and the customer pays for subscription. What it calls TaaS, or Testing-as-a-Service. This solution definitely allows the customer to keep it right after getting it right.