Active Voice and Philips to Introduce New Speech Recognition System at CeBIT 2003
Speech Enabled Directory Service Allows Easy Access to Company Directory Information
Active Voice's Seven speech recognition solution is a Microsoft® Windows® 2000-based application that functions as a virtual telephone operator, providing subscribers anytime, anywhere access to company directory information. When using Seven, subscribers are asked to speak the name of a colleague or department they wish to talk to. Seven retrieves the name from a database, then connects subscribers to the appropriate telephone extension. Seven uses leading-edge speech recognition software from Nuance® and the high-quality ScanSoft® RealSpeak™ text-to-speech engine for accurate name retrieval and confirmation.
"We are very pleased to introduce Seven together with Philips Business Communications," said Jeroen Franken, Director of Sales and Marketing, Active Voice BV. "By working with Philips, we are emphasizing our mutual partner focus to provide a new time-saving product to Philips and Active Voice customers around the world."
Seven provides workers a convenient and efficient way to reach their colleagues. It replaces the need for costly directory services because it gives every employee easy access to all internal telephone extensions, as well as frequently dialed external numbers. Workers no longer have to browse the Internet, look up numbers in a directory, or check their email contact list - they can simply dial Seven for the information. "Users can also access the system from their home office or via their cellular phones; Seven can be reached from virtually any phone in the world," added Franken.
"Reachability is one of the key elements in today's work environment," said Marc Bauchant, Vice President of Marketing, Philips Business Communications. "As more and more employees are becoming mobile, working at home or on the road is no longer an exception. By introducing Seven to its existing broad range of directory services, Philips is adding a strong speech dimension that supports reachability in a convenient way. Seven fits in perfectly with Philips' directory services solutions, such as MyOffice@Net Directory Browser, and is fully-integrated so that names and telephone numbers are automatically distributed to Seven. The use of powerful text-to-speech and speech-to-text technologies makes manual maintenance unnecessary."
The Seven application can be connected to virtually any telephone switch by using a simple telephone extension, making deployment easy and reliable. The names and telephone numbers of an organization's employees are stored within a database, which is updated via a connection with the telephone switch or through an import tool. In both cases, additional directory information or alternative spellings can be added to the Seven database using a Windows-based graphical user interface (GUI).
Seven is available as a 2-8 port system and is localized in U.K. English, Dutch, German, Italian, French, and Spanish. It will be made generally available to customers in March 2003.
About Royal Philips Electronics
Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands is one of the world's biggest electronics companies and Europe's largest, with sales of EUR 31.8 billion in 2002. It is a global leader in color television sets, lighting, electric shavers, medical diagnostic imaging and patient monitoring, and one-chip TV products. Its 170,000 employees in more than 60 countries are active in the areas of lighting, consumer electronics, domestic appliances, components, semiconductors, and medical systems. Philips is quoted on the NYSE (symbol: PHG), London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and other stock exchanges. News from Philips is located at www.philips.com\newscenter.
About AVST
Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST) is a leading developer of Unified Communications solutions with over 15 million users relying on its products and services to maximize their productivity. With three decades of innovation excellence, AVST is solely focused on delivering communications solutions that increase individual, group and enterprise productivity. Its flagship Unified Communications platform, CallXpress®, offers best in class interoperability, scalability and resiliency while delivering advanced call processing, voicemail, unified messaging, personal assistant, fax, speech and notification capabilities. With CallXpress, an organization can uniquely protect and extend its existing IT and telephony infrastructure investments — now and into the future.
Headquartered in Orange County, Calif., AVST maintains facilities in Seattle, Wash. and the United Kingdom and has remote sales offices throughout the United States. AVST's Unified Communications solutions are sold and supported internationally by an extensive network of resellers and OEM partners. For more information contact Denny Michael, Vice President of Marketing, at 949-699-2300 or access the company's website at www.avst.com.
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