Microsoft’s Office Communicator evolved into Lync and has gained traction in competing against other UC products. Considering that Microsoft is a software company and not a communications firm, it’s quite an impressive feat. Lync was one of the most anticipated UC products at Enterprise Connect 2011, and the keynote presentation was one of the most well received.

At my workplace a group of us are Lync users. I love it. It has a clean interface and not excessively featured (ahem, Office), it does a great job with chat and VOIP communications. I also enjoy the ability to easily set up multi-endpoint ringing, transferring to another device mid-conversation, and simple drag-and-drop for conferencing. What a great business tool.

Back then, in March 2011, Microsoft semi-promised a Lync client for all the major mobile platforms: iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone 7, and Symbian. The plan was to release them before the end of the year.

Well, it’s almost December. Will Microsoft make good on this promise?

Yes, according to a tweet by Microsoft Australia. Within “the next four weeks.” (The tweet has since been removed.)

Most consumers probably won’t care about the release of mobile Lync clients, but for a lot of businesses that deployed Lync and have a workforce tethered to the various smartphones out there, this is welcomed news and could certainly boost productivity. More importantly, it’d truly demonstrate Microsoft’s commitment to unified communication.

(h/t BGR)

I do like how Genesys has evolved its narrative over the years. In the beginning it was all about voice calls. Then it became interactions. Now Genesys labels them conversations.

Conversations are two-way, engaging, and personal — exactly the expectation of customers in today’s multichannel and mobile world when dealing with an organization.

It’s no surprise that Genesys continues to focus on mobile and multichannel conversations. I also think that the Groupama iPhone app opened the eyes of many in the industry to finally get a glimpse of how today’s technologies can shape customer service experiences of tomorrow.

The company is taking advantage of the interest in mobile applications to unveil its Mobile Customer Engagement strategy during G-Force Melbourne (Australia’s second most populous city, not the sunny town in Florida). Its latest G8 Suite offers solutions to help companies make this mobile leap as seamless and as painless as possible.

However, I think the bigger news came from ZDNet Australia:

Contact centre software licensing will be a thing of the past, because contact centre services will move to the cloud within five years, according to Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise’s Asia Pacific senior vice president Michael McBrien

The company, which offers its Genesys call centre services both in the cloud and as an on-premise software-based service, has around 1000 customers in the cloud already, McBrien told journalists at the G-Force 2011 conference in Melbourne today. He said that it would encompass Alcatel-Lucent Enterprises’ entire customer base by 2016.

Having 1,000 cloudy customers is quite impressive, especially in the contact center space. Genesys, of course, does not offer the infrastructure for cloud-based solutions and have no interest in becoming a massive cloud company, but I have to think that its cloud partners are grinning ear to ear with 1,000 customers. I also wonder how the Genesys licensing scheme will evolve with the cloud paradigm shift and how that impacts the company financially since software licenses are very much its bread and butter. McBrien told ZDNet that the company should “go to a different market, a mid market.” Reminds me of the Genesys Express days — didn’t work out too well though. Maybe we’ll see it resurrected in the near future?

In the meantime, there’s still a license.dat file lurking somewhere between the premise and cloud, and the sacred port of 7260 listens intently amidst the hum of a data center, each ping echoes through the vast networks like a drop of gold coins.

Read the official Mobile Customer Engagement strategy press release:

Melbourne, Australia, August 24, 2011 — Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) is calling upon companies to take advantage of today’s powerful, multi-channel smart phones by creating a new model for mobile customer engagement. With today’s mobile approach mostly limited to self-service and limited transactions, Alcatel-Lucent is prescribing a strategy that brings conversations to mobile customer service applications by intelligently linking contact center agents and customer care resources from across the enterprise, including those in the back office and branch locations. While many companies already offer their customers mobile service apps — consider the thousands available for banking, retail and travel — these are often poorly integrated within a company’s existing customer service strategy and contact center technology platform. As a result, today’s mobile customers suffer from a disconnected experience that often delivers frustrating hold times or no way to contact an agent or resource for additional support. This disconnected approach also fails to unleash the power of today’s smart phones in transforming customer engagement with proactive contact, personalized applications and location-based services. During the G-Force Melbourne 2011 customer event, Alcatel-Lucent outlined its Genesys Mobile Customer Engagement strategy, which focuses on helping companies move from transactional applications to mobile conversations and recommends the following best practices: Contact Me – provide seamless and secure ‘click-to-call’ capabilities with context from smart phone applications with immediate agent support or scheduled call backs. Connect Me – deliver mobile customers to best resource from contact center to back office departments and branch locations, across any channel – voice, SMS, chat. Know Me – provide personalized mobile experience based current service tasks and proactive contact with targeted offers and location-based services. “Today’s consumers rely on their smart phones and tablets to be their ‘windows to the world.’ Businesses need to be creative in offering apps that integrate into all areas of the enterprise, from sales and marketing to customer care,” said Tom Burns, President, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise. “Our mobile solutions featured in the G8 suite are bringing our core cross-channel routing and application openness together with the power of our Genesys Conversation Manager to provide the context and presence information needed to deliver the next generation mobile experience.” At G-Force Melbourne, Genesys is bringing together the solutions companies need to deliver the next generation mobile customer experience. The Genesys G8 suite will be on display, including: Conversation Manager – bring agent conversation to an iPhone Integrated Mobile Customer Care Apps – mobile customer service applications UC Connect – linking mobile customers to back office and mobile experts

About Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) The long-trusted partner of service providers, enterprises, strategic industries and governments around the world, Alcatel-Lucent is a leader in mobile, fixed, IP and Optics technologies, and a pioneer in applications and services. Alcatel-Lucent includes Bell Labs, one of the world’s foremost centres of research and innovation in communications technology. With operations in more than 130 countries and one of the most experienced global services organizations in the industry, Alcatel-Lucent is a local partner with global reach. The Company achieved revenues of Euro 16 billion in 2010 and is incorporated in France and headquartered in Paris. For more information, visit Alcatel-Lucent on: http://www.alcatel-lucent.com, read the latest posts on the Alcatel-Lucent blog http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/blog and follow the Company on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Alcatel_Lucent.   Contact the Alcatel-Lucent Press Office:    press@alcatel-lucent.com

Things are certainly getting more interesting in ALU land.

Today the company announced the acquisition of OpenPlug, a French company specializing in cross-platform development tools for mobile devices. OpenPlug’s flagship product, ELIPS Studio, fulfills the developer’s dream of “write once, run everywhere” (hmmm, have we heard that somewhere else before?) when it comes to mobile applications.

Alcatel-Lucent wants to remind you that this is the second acquisition in recent months — in June it scooped up ProgrammableWeb, a site dedicated to Web APIs. And who can forget ALU’s foray into the cool and hip with its participation in SXSW 2010? Is ALU seeking to be the Microsoft of the telecom space?

It’s obvious that it wants attention from today’s mobile-savvy developers. With OpenPlug, ALU can now offer a development tool for its customers to create enterprise apps with less hassle. However, there’s one thing that’s missing: no support for RIM Blackberry? Kudos for supporting bleeding edge mobile OSes like Android and Apple iOS (iPhone and iPad), but I want to know why Windows Mobile is supported but not Blackberry? Walk into any sizable company these days, and about 90% of the time you’d find more employees with BBs than WinMos.

I certainly hope Blackberry support is on the road map. What easier way to make inroads into the enterprise mobile market, right? Perhaps Crackberrys mainly reside in the U.S. and not so much in France or the rest of Europe? But if ALU is eying the American enterprise market, there’s absolutely no excuse not to hold hands with the Blackberry platform…

Press release from ALU:

Paris, September 1, 2010 – Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) today announced that it has acquired OpenPlug, a mobile software and applications development tools vendor. Through this acquisition, Alcatel-Lucent deepens its role in the applications space by delivering, as part of its integrated suite of developer tools, a platform where application developers can write an application once, which will then be translated to run on any of the five major mobile operating systems. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Alcatel-Lucent can now extend OpenPlug’s functionality to service providers, enterprises and developers so they can create and deploy applications — in virtually record time and without sacrificing the unique customer experience — across multiple mobile devices and within service provider app stores. As a result, applications that had previously only been available on more sophisticated devices such as smartphones, can now be enjoyed by consumers on any mobile device, which opens up opportunities in emerging markets, where low cost mobile phone circulation is highest.

This is the second acquisition Alcatel-Lucent has made over the past three months to expand and enhance the application ecosystem. In June, the company acquired ProgrammableWeb, the technology industry’s go-to source of API-related content.

“While demand for mobile apps is peaking, so is the fragmentation of mobile development platforms and tools,” said Michael Cote, analyst for Redmonk. “This makes it very expensive to target all devices and can lead to putting all your eggs in one, often tightly controlled basket, like Apple’s, or doing a least-common denominator, mobile web app that can’t benefit from full native device access. A tool that can target all platforms is hugely needed in this space, and OpenPlug should work well with the total mobile app development portfolio Alcatel-Lucent is putting together.”

Thanks to OpenPlug, service providers, enterprises and developers do not have to be selective about which of the many mobile platforms they will write applications for, thus limiting their potential for service adoption and revenue potential. OpenPlug’s mobile software turns every device into a smart device. It allows developers to write applications once and convert application code into native software that runs on any leading mobile device operating system, including iPhone®, Android®, Symbian®, Windows Mobile®, and Linux®.

“Being able to provide more applications across multiple devices helps service providers significantly broaden their app store content to create more value for consumers,” said Laura Merling, vice president of Alcatel-Lucent’s global developer strategy. “As service providers typically offer multiple mobile devices to their subscriber base, the OpenPlug software can help them get to market five times faster by allowing them to easily port an application to all of their devices. And this isn’t purely a mobile play — the software can be extended to support application development for IPTV set top boxes, game consoles, even the ng Connect LTE Connected Car.”

“Deploying valuable web and mobile services requires assembling many different pieces from many horizons,” said Eric Baissus, CEO of OpenPlug. “By combining OpenPlug’s ELIPS Suite and ELIPS Studio technologies with Alcatel-Lucent’s platforms and API services, we enable developers and service providers to gather all these pieces in a very efficient and consistent way. This will dramatically facilitate the deployment and the monetization of the new generation of applications that the market is expecting.”

The OpenPlug toolset will be incorporated into Alcatel-Lucent’s Developer Platform and Open API Service, thus broadening the functionality available to service providers, enterprises and developers for the exposure of network assets and the rapid introduction of new services across mobile and Web domains.

The move advances Alcatel-Lucent’s Application Enablement strategy, which is focused on combining the trusted and secure network capabilities of service providers with the speed and innovation of the Web to provide a richer end-user experience.

About OpenPlug
OpenPlug is a software provider specialized in mobile telephony and commercializes under the ELIPS name a range of patented technologies that facilitate the development of mobile phones, smartphones and the applications that run on them. ELIPS Studio offers the first open software development environment allowing Independent software vendors (ISVs) to create and deploy simultaneously in record time their mobile applications on iPhone, Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Linux and other proprietary systems. ELIPS Suite is a white-label application suite that facilitates the design of mass-market mobile phones and ships in millions of Tier-1 mobile phones worldwide. OpenPlug products are used by leaders of the mobile industry such as Sony Ericsson, Intel Corporation, Arima Communications, Foxconn, as well as thousands of application developers. Founded in 2002, OpenPlug is based in Sophia Antipolis – France. For more information, visit OpenPlug’s corporate website at www.openplug.com or the ELIPS Studio Developer Zone at http://developer.openplug.com. (iPhone, Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile and Linux are registered trademarks of their respective owners.)

About Alcatel-Lucent
Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) is the trusted transformation partner of service providers, enterprises, strategic industries such as defense, energy, healthcare, transportation, and governments worldwide, providing solutions to deliver voice, data and video communication services to end-users. A leader in fixed, mobile and converged broadband networking, IP and optics technologies, applications and services, Alcatel-Lucent leverages the unrivalled technical and scientific expertise of Bell Labs, one of the largest innovation powerhouses in the communications industry. With operations in more than 130 countries and the most experienced global services organization in the industry, Alcatel-Lucent is a local partner with a global reach. Alcatel-Lucent achieved revenues of Euro 15.2 billion in 2009 and is incorporated in France, with executive offices located in Paris. For more information, visit Alcatel-Lucent on the Internet:http://www.alcatel-lucent.com, read the latest posts on the Alcatel-Lucent blog http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/blog and follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Alcatel_Lucent.

Contact the Alcatel-Lucent Press Office: press@alcatel-lucent.com

This is a guest post by Naveen Narayan, who has worked as a contact center project consultant for 12 years. He currently resides in the northwest, loves open source software, and gets pretty close to being a professional photographer.

We are spending more time online doing all sorts of things from paying bills to managing routing transactions in real time. In some ways, the emergence of social media is the latest crescendo. Facebook was recently named the most innovative application. Google has made search ubiquitous. Windows has made the PC and the Internet pervasive. IVRs, on the other hand, have existed for more than 20 years. Yet even today we are still researching the trends in IVR usage…

IVR usage is different in different age groups:

1.       Older population likes to talk to a “warm body”

2.       Some groups prefer self-service over a telephone

3.       Younger people show a strong preference towards online channels for customer support

Studying further of the underlying trends show that:

1.       A stronger and more converged network creates grounds for stronger applications which in turn attracts a larger user base away from the telephone — that creates a higher demand for bandwidth and the cycle repeats.

2.       In effect, if more people move towards the Internet to resolve issues that they could otherwise have resolved over the phone, why do we need to invest anything more than what we already have into voice infrastructure?

3.       Land line phones are heading towards extinction — as cell phone and smartphone users increase each day.

4.       Not only are people spending more time online, they are doing so in more ways than one — as the lush market for smartphones clearly demonstrates.

Given the trend of development and growth, as web applications mature more, and as businesses drive toward increased cost cutting, and as the older population “ages out,” will the IVR eventually die? And how much time does it have — given that the ubiquitous Internet has existed for less than three decades, VoIP is about five years old, and the PC itself is just a tad bit more than three decades old?

With mobile devices becoming more powerful every day, they are destined to get some serious speech applications. Just do a search for iPhone speech applications. Turin, Italy based Loquendo couldn’t have released its mobile TTS and ASR platform at a better time.

And the company means business in the mobile market, too. Support for iPhone? Check. Support for Android? Check. Support for Maemo (open sourced from Nokia)? Whatever that is, check. Support for Moblin (Intel backed mobile OS)? Yep, check. Support for Android (Google open source, as we all know)? Check! With the exception of the iPhone, the rest are all open source Linux-based operating systems so understandably Loquendo could easily come out with its product to support all of them. (The iPhone OS is based on Mac OS X, and although not open source it still has some Unix lineage.)

I look forward to the day when my mobile phone can serve as an IVR…

Official press release:

Loquendo, leading speech technology provider worldwide, announces that Loquendo Embedded Technologies – ASR and TTS – are now available for OEMs and developers of multimedia applications on the Android, Maemo and Moblin software platforms.

Android is the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices. Maemo is a software platform mostly based on open source code. Moblin is an open source operating system optimized for the next generation of mobile devices.

Android is available under a developer-friendly open-source license, which gives mobile operators and device manufacturers the freedom and flexibility to design innovative and exciting products. Recent arrivals to the market include Motorola’s Droid, HTC’s Nexus One, and the soon to be released Sony Ericsson Xperia X10.

According to IDC, shipments of handsets with the Android OS will reach 68m units by 2013, second only to Symbian. Gartner also forecasts that Android, by 2012, will rank second behind the Symbian OS.

Loquendo TTS and ASR seamlessly integrate with the Android platform, offering Java-level interfaces to developers.

Moreover, Loquendo TTS has been integrated into the Text-To-Speech Extended framework: this interface, once installed, makes Loquendo synthetic speech available to any Android app, allowing Android phone users to immediately upgrade to high quality TTS.

On Android, the TTS interface is very simple at the API level, and all functionalities are controlled through Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) tags. By offering a fully-fledged SSML implementation, Loquendo gives application developers full control over its TTS features.

The Maemo platform is built on large parts of open source components, and was developed by Nokia in collaboration with many open source projects such as the Linux kernel, Debian, GNOME, and many more. The Maemo SDK provides an open development environment for applications on top of the Maemo platform. Maemo is based on the Linux operating system kernel – able to support a wide range of different kinds of devices from wrist watches to large server systems, making it ideally placed for the MID (Mobile Internet Devices) and netbook as well as smartphone markets.

With the availability of Loquendo technologies, Maemo developers will be able to unleash the potential of speech in developing voice-enabled apps.

The Moblin platform, short for ‘mobile Linux’, is built around the Intel Atom processor and is an open source operating system for MIDs, netbooks, nettops and embedded devices. The concept behind the Moblin project is to create an operating system specifically designed for netbooks and MID devices by minimizing both boot times and power consumption. The central piece of the Moblin architecture is a hardware and usage-model independent layer providing a single, uniform way of developing such devices. Moblin is based on the Linux kernel.

Early this month, Intel and Nokia announced the merging of Moblin and Maemo into the MeeGo mobile software platform, for which Loquendo will also offer full support.

Loquendo Embedded TTS and ASR are the ideal choice for speech-enabling mobile apps and services, including voice-enabled phones, navigation applications, MIDs, ebook readers, assistive devices, etc.

Loquendo TTS is natural, fluent and highly expressive synthetic speech, while Loquendo ASR is fast, accurate speech recognition even on large-vocabulary, natural-language speech. Both are high-performing, high quality technologies, however compact the device.

Whether on device side or server side, Loquendo offers the same extensive choice of languages and voices, regardless of the architectural solution, enabling service providers to guarantee a seamless service even in mixed environments – where voice content generation is shared across device and network.

Loquendo Embedded Technologies leverage Loquendo TTS mixed language capability, support the TeleAtlas® and Navteq™ SAMPA phonetic alphabets, and are available for all major embedded operating systems: Android, Maemo, Moblin, Linux, iPhone, Symbian OS™ S60, Windows Mobile 5 & 6 (all editions), CE 5 & 6, Windows XP Embedded and Tablet PC ed., VxWorks and QNX.

For more information, or for help and support with your application ideas, please contact Loquendo at: embedded@loquendo.com.

About Loquendo – Vocal Technology and Services
Awarded Speech Industry ‘Market Leader’ for the past three consecutive years, Loquendo provides a complete range of speech technologies for server, embedded and desktop solutions – in 28 languages with 68 voices, and constantly growing – helping businesses deliver a next-generation client experience while saving them millions each year.

Loquendo Embedded Technologies are innovative, easy-to-integrate solutions deployed in more than 10 million mobile and on-board navigation systems globally, as well as powering PDAs, assistive devices, virtual Web-assistants and other embedded solutions around the world.

Loquendo TTS, Loquendo ASR, and Loquendo Speaker Identification and Verification are high-quality, high-performance technologies, also available on the Loquendo MRCP Server and VoiceXML and CCXML platform.

Loquendo is a Telecom Italia company headquartered in Turin, Italy, with offices in the US, Spain, Germany and France, and a global network of partners.

For more info, and to hear Loquendo TTS for yourself, go to www.loquendo.com.