* Today's speech applications range from custom-built to pre-built
When it comes to speech applications, deployment options range from the custom-built to the pre-built. It’s different from in the past, when companies had little choice but to develop speech applications using a single vendor’s proprietary platform and tools – aided in many cases by an army of consultants.
That’s the basic premise to our Special Focus this week. Our author (abednarz@nww.com) says that today’s corporate buyers can sacrifice application customization and complexity in favor of configurable, packaged offerings, often geared to specific vertical markets. ScanSoft, for example, offers SpeechPaks tailored for healthcare and utility companies that combine design templates, standard call flows, dialog components and pre-recorded voice prompts. At the same time, outsourced services from vendors such as Tellme Networks and NetByTel are getting the attention of companies that want to avoid the capital expenditure required for traditional voice technologies deployed in-house.
In addition, the advent of standards such as VoiceXML and the Microsoft-backed Speech Application Language Tags (SALT) is letting users develop applications that can be ported from one vendor’s platform to another.
Users are buying into the idea, analysts say. According to Gartner, 50% of voice application development will be based on platform-independent application development tools by year-end 2006. Taken together, these trends are driving up demand for voice-enabled technologies. According to Datamonitor, global voice business revenue totaled over $800 million in 2003 and is expected to hit $1 billion this year and $1.3 billion by the end of 2005.
For more on this article see: https://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/110804specialfocus.html
