IBM gives new voice to speech recognition

IBM has revamped its voice recognition strategy with the launch of seven products aimed at the original equipment manufacturer market.

Big Blue also announced alliances with customer relationship management software provider Siebel Systems, voice software technologist General Magic and services company Luminant to increase the use of voice technologies among ebusinesses.

Voice systems enable telcos, for example, to build so-called talking portals that provide news, horoscopes and other information using traditional phones. "Instead of using a web browser, you are using a voice browser," said an IBM spokesman.

Some analysts agree that voice recognition platforms allow developers to create different applications for speech-controlled internet activities. Steve McClure, an analyst at researcher IDC, said: "It's simplifying the creation of these applications."

Among the new IBM products introduced are WebSphere Voice Server and a software developers' kit for the company's Embedded ViaVoice Multiplatform Edition software. Big Blue has also integrated Voice XML (VXML), an extension of XML and Java, into its voice-enabled applications.

The WebSphere Voice Server, which will ship in the autumn on Windows NT, would work with enterprise call centre software to convert customers' spoken requests into text using IBM's ViaVoice technology. This text would then be converted to VXML and forwarded to the database as a query. The text-based answer would also be converted and sent to the customer as a voice message.

IBM also unveiled three additional components to its DirectTalk development platform, including DirectTalk Speech Recognition and Text-to-Speech, which are both aimed at Big Blue's AIX environment, and DirectTalk Beans for Java.

The company also plans to integrate General Magic's MagicTalk VXML platform with DirectTalk and WebSphere Voice Server.