Hands-Free Communications For Mobile Professionals Enabled By New Technology from AVST
Foothill Ranch, Calif., (December 8, 2003) – As California legislators are considering a ban on cellular phone use while driving, Applied Voice & Speech Technologies Inc. (AVST), a provider of unified communications solutions for the enterprise market, today introduced the next-generation of its speech application, Seneca™, to address multiple mobility issues including driver distraction. Seneca, a voice activated, unified office solution is designed to integrate with and enhance the capabilities of phone systems (PBX), voicemail, fax and email applications through state-of-the-art speech recognition technology.
Addressing the growing requirement for hands-free mobile communications, Seneca empowers mobile phone users with a hands-free communication interface to reply to voice messages, place outgoing calls, send and receive email and redirect incoming calls through simple voice commands. As today’s workforce becomes increasingly more mobile, Seneca’s speech-enabled auto-attendant efficiently and effectively answers and manages all incoming calls into an enterprise, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week allowing individuals to be more accessible and productive while operating remotely, commuting or traveling.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 25 percent of vehicle accidents are due to driver distraction. As auto manufacturers continue to add in-vehicle entertainment devices, from DVD players to dashboard Internet access, driver distraction is rapidly increasing and cellular phone use is contributing.
“More and more companies have employees that travel regularly or work from remote locations,” said Hardy Myers, AVST President and CEO. “These individuals require the ability to keep up with their voicemail, email and fax messages at all times. In addition, remote or traveling employees rely on their cellular phones to communicate back to the office. Seneca provides these mobile employees with hands-free communications, a reliable speech interface and increases their productivity by putting the power of their voice to work for them while they’re away from the office.”
According to Myers, the launch of Seneca is the company’s next step toward its goal of delivering superior communications solutions that meet the current and emerging requirements of enterprise business customers for real-time mobile communications.
Seneca is a modular software solution that integrates directly with an enterprise’s existing voicemail system thereby extending the life span of the original investment. Seneca key features include:
- Multiple modules including Auto-Attendant, Voicemail, Dialing, Email and Fax modules;
- Total Hands-Free Mode with full speech-enabled voicemail and email navigation and outbound dialing;
- Expanded capacity – supporting up to 48 ports with 5,000 mobility users and 10,000 auto attendant users;
- State-of-the-art speech recognition engine from Nuance Communications (Version 8.0);
- State-of-the-art text-to-speech engine from Nuance Communications (Vocalizer 3.0).
“We are pleased AVST has leveraged our speech recognition technology to enable the mobile workforce,” said Lynda Smith, Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer at Nuance. “From an industry perspective, by integrating Nuance’s advanced speech technology with their switch agnostic speech-enabled unified office solution, AVST is able to provide customers with a much broader deployment potential for the mobile marketplace.”
Seneca is immediately available through AVST’s established reseller channels.
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Media Contacts:
Kerry Fedro
Lages & Associates
949.453.8080
kerry@lages.com
About AVST
The typical enterprise communications infrastructure is made up of a collection of technologies from multiple vendors, acquired over time and never intended to work together. To maximize user and business productivity, while leveraging existing IT investments, interoperability is a must.
AVST delivers the industry's most interoperable Unified Communications (UC) platform that brings best-of-breed voice, mobility and business process solutions to the enterprise. Unlike virtually every other UC vendor, AVST does not constrain customers with a single vendor lock-in approach. In fact, it's the very opposite. By connecting new and existing technologies, AVST frees organizations from the constraints of a closed, single-source UC solution, unlocking the full potential of their communications infrastructure.
With over 15 million users worldwide and three decades of innovation excellence, AVST is unifying communications®.
Headquartered in Orange County, California, AVST maintains facilities in Seattle, Washington, Victoria B.C., Canada and the United Kingdom and has remote sales offices throughout the United States. AVST's UC solutions are sold and supported worldwide by an extensive network of resellers and OEM partners. To learn more about AVST, our products and partners, please visit www.avst.com or you can follow us at Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.
View a 1 minute movie about AVST:
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