March/April 2006

Magazine Features

Choosing Hardware for Your Speech Application

It is debatable whether speech technologies have become mainstream and, certainly, a great deal of the attention is based on skepticism. Nevertheless, more and more companies are looking at what speech can do for them and their customers.

Considerations for Choosing a VoiceXML Platform or Service Provider

Enterprises and carriers are shifting investment from proprietary hardware-based voice systems to open VoiceXML systems in order to take advantage of the flexibility and cost savings that VoiceXML and other open standards can provide.

Speech Applications Security: Protecting Your Business and Your Customers From Hackers

With unauthorized access to and theft of customer information on the rise, speech-enabled customer care systems present a new set of security parameters for companies to address. If ignored, a security breach in these systems could be devastating from both an economic and customer trust and loyalty perspective.

Deployments

Empowering Customers: The AvMed Way

Created in 1969 as a prepaid health care system for pilots in the Miami aviation industry, AvMed Health Plans is Florida's largest, not-for-profit health plan serving employers in the major metropolitan areas of Florida.

Giving Physicians Choices

Staten Island University Hospital (SIUH), a 785-bed teaching health care facility located in New York City's fastest growing borough of 450,000 inhabitants, is a recognized leader in innovative, technology-based medicine.

Using Speech for Search

Customers of Pull-A-Part, an Atlanta, Ga.-based owner of five discount, self-service auto parts stores/salvage yards in the southeastern U.S., rely on a speech-based search system to find the parts that they need. A customer-searchable inventory is critical for the company in order to keep employee overhead low, according to Ross Kogon, chief operating officer. The company set up a searchable Web site a couple of years ago, which enabled customers to use search capabilities at its…

Editor's Letter

Welcome to the EAB

Forward Thinking

Improve the User Experience

Graphical user interfaces have been the standard user interface for computer users for over 20 years. It's time to up-level the user's computing experience by voice-enabling applications.

Voice Ideas - Behavioral vs. Physical

Human Factor

A Fool's Revenge

Industry View

Coping with the Terrible 2000s: CAT's Prospects in 2006

We are now half way through the first decade of the new millennium. It's time to take stock of the factors that have had the greatest influence on automated speech's progress into enterprise and service provider IT infrastructures as a major component of Conversational Access Technologies (CAT).

Q & A

Bob Ritchey, President and CEO, Intervoice

Intervoice recently completed its acquisition of Edify, a global supplier of interactive voice response solutions, from S1 Corporation, Edify's parent company. During the last four fiscal quarters, Intervoice and Edify have produced combined revenue of more than $200 million. The combined company will have more than 850 employees worldwide handling more than 5,000 customers. Under terms of the definitive agreement announced November 18, 2005, Intervoice has paid S1 $33.5 million in cash to acquire Edify.…

A View from AVIOS

Untapped Potential: Speech Technologies and the Home Health Care Market

Voice Value

Innovations: Speech Technology with Impact - What Is Going on in the Labs?

What Is Going on in the Labs? The focus of the next few issues of this column will be less on innovative new products, but rather what is going on behind closed (or open) doors in research and development (R&D) in the labs. Speech technologies in particular have had a long academic research history, highlighted by the exceedingly long time it took for initial research - perhaps 30-40 years prior - to bear fruit as viable

Speech Recognition: The Right to Conversational Free Speech

FYI

Industry Dashboard: Datamonitor

The first two months in 2006 certainly started off on a strong note for speech recognition. There were 15 publicly announced customer wins across the globe, uptake in the entertainment, media and leisure vertical and some interesting, non-traditional deployments. Not surprisingly, the majority of the wins were network-based speech deals. PC and embedded speech, together, accounted for 20 percent of deals as seen in the technology quadrant in the Industry Dashboard. …