Cisco launches personalisation hub

Software applications provider, NHancement Technologies, has teamed up with networking giant Cisco to provide unified communications to users through any wireless or wired devices.

Douglas Zorn, president and chief executive of NHancement, said the companies have developed a web-based suite of tools to link voice and data applications using IP telephony networks. The product, called Personalised Communication Hub(PCH), includes personalised web portal access, audio web portals and speechrecognition technology as well as web-phone features.

PCH also includes unified communications and information technologies that coordinates the use of telephones, emails, faxes, pagers and web-based communications.

By deploying Cisco's hardware and networking infrastructure, Zorn said, "This means users of our product can gather personal information, enterprise information and review it in the manner they want, be that voice, graphics or text."

He also said users can 'talk' to their personalised web page, grab the information they need and collate it in a useful way.

The product will initially be targeted at service providers but there are also plans to market to enterprise customers. Call centres will also be a big market for these products, said Zorn.

"We will be the first mover in this marketplace and should get a good share ofthe market," he said. Researcher Ovum predicts that the global unified messaging market will grow from $1.5bn in 2000 to $12bn by 2006.