Major breaking news in speech tech: Nuance announced today that it will scoop up Vlingo. Oh, and happy Hanukkah (not in the press release).

Supposedly Vlingo was the other company that Apple was evaluating when developing Siri on the iPhone 4S. Here’s a bit of backstory between Vlingo and Nuance. It’s not pretty, but now it’s over. TechCrunch also chimes in.

This would be the gazillionth company that Nuance has acquired in recent years. In fact, there are hardly any other competitors left, so I predict that the speech giant may enter a new market soon. I’m thinking a wearable device for pets which will translate barks and meows into synthesized human speech. It’ll need a lot of animal test subjects in such case, therefore don’t be surprised if it starts buying pet stores (chains and mom-and-pops) as well as operate zoos.

General consumers and techies alike have raised concerns over AT&T buying T-Mobile (deal is now off) for fear of an anti-competitive carrier marketplace. Yet nobody thinks about the speech marketplace whenever they ask Siri to perform a task.

The press release:

Burlington, Mass. – December 20, 2011 – Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) announced it has signed an agreement to acquire Vlingo, Inc. Fueled by unprecedented demand for intelligent voice interfaces that combine voice, language understanding and semantic processing, Nuance and Vlingo will combine their deep innovation and R&D expertise to deliver next-generation natural language interfaces across numerous markets and industries.

Consumer interest and demand for virtual assistant and voice-enabled capabilities have exploded in recent months, creating a $5 billion market opportunity that spans phones, tablets, cars, televisions, navigation devices, music players, PCs and more. Both Nuance and Vlingo see an unprecedented appetite for intelligent devices that understand the spoken word and deliver outcomes for consumers and professionals.

“Inspired by the introduction of services such as Apple’s Siri and our own Dragon Go!, virtually every mobile and consumer electronics company on the planet is looking for ways to integrate natural, conversational voice interactions into their mobile products, applications, and services,” said Mike Thompson, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Nuance Mobile.  “By acquiring Vlingo, we are able to accelerate the pace of innovation to meet this demand.”

“Vlingo and Nuance have long shared a similar vision for the power and global proliferation of mobile voice and language understanding. As a result of our complementary research and development efforts, our companies are stronger together than alone. Our combined resources afford us the opportunity to better compete, and offer a powerful proposition to customers, partners and developers,” said Dave Grannan, CEO, Vlingo.

By harnessing the combined expertise in voice, language and multilingual capabilities, Nuance will be able to take advantage of the adoption of intelligent mobile assistants, where consumers, businesses, doctors and patients can engage in more human, natural interactions with devices and systems all over the world.

Vlingo is a Virtual Assistant that turns your words into action by combining voice to text technology, natural language processing, and Vlingo’s Intent Engine to understand the user’s intent and take the appropriate action. Founded in 2006, Vlingo is backed by Charles River Ventures, Sigma Partners, Yahoo! and AT&T and headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For more information, go to www.vlingo.com.

Nuance is a leading provider of voice and language solutions for businesses and consumers around the world. Its technologies, applications and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming the way people interact with information and how they create, share and use documents. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuance’s proven applications and professional services. For more information, please visit: nuance.com.

Nuance and the Nuance logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States of America and/or other countries. All other company names or product names may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Statements in this press release regarding the proposed transaction between Nuance and Vlingo, the market opportunity, the pace of innovation, increased customer demand in the mobile market, future product offerings by the combined company, and any other statements about Nuance managements’ future expectations, beliefs, goals, plans or prospects constitute forward looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any statements that are not statements of historical fact (including statements containing the words “believes,” “plans,” “anticipates,” “expects,” estimates and similar expressions) should also be considered to be forward looking statements. There are a number of important factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those indicated by such forward looking statements, including the ability to consummate the transaction; the ability of Nuance to successfully integrate Vlingo’s operations and employees; the ability to realize anticipated synergies and cost savings; the failure to retain customers; and the other factors described in the ability of Nuance to integrate the product offerings of the combined companies and other the factors described in Nuance’s Annual Report on Form 10 K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2011 and other filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Nuance disclaims any intention or obligation to update any forward looking statements as a result of developments occurring after the date of this press release.

Besides the significant hardware upgrades, the other selling point of the Apple iPhone 4S is Siri, the speech-enabled assistant that can help you schedule appointments, set reminders, read and compose SMS, and many other tasks. The technology is essentially a massive (considering how many iPhone 4S users are there in the U.S.) cloud-based speech recognition service reportedly provided by Nuance software.

Unfortunately Apple decided to make Siri only available on the iPhone 4S even though various resourceful hackers have proven that it can be run on the older 3GS and 4 models. Even the iPad 2 didn’t get Siri although its hardware is similar with the 4S.

Well, the folks at Applidium have cracked Siri’s protocol and published very informative technical details. Among them:

• Siri uses TCP port 443, over HTTPS (Secure HTTP)
• The request is a custom “ACE” method (as opposed to commonly used “GET”)
• Raw audio data is sent but compressed using Speex codec
• An iPhone 4S identifier is required with Siri

First, RIP Steve Jobs. The world will miss you dearly. It was only the day before his death that relatively new Apple CEO Tim Cook unveiled the iPhone 4S.

So while many speculated and hoped for an iPhone 5 to be announced, it was only an iPhone 4S being the grand finale in the “Let’s Talk iPhone” event. Yet it was fitting that Apple chose that name for the event because the real star of the show was Siri, the new voice-capable assistant available exclusively on the iPhone 4S (thanks to its powerful dual-core A5 CPU).

The live Siri demo went without a hitch — Apple indeed risked a lot to publicly demonstrate its features right in front of journalists and bloggers. Although Siri’s still slapped with a “beta” sticker, it seemed solid enough during the demo.

The question on a lot of speech geeks’ minds is, of couse, does Siri use Nuance technology, considering all the rumors of an Apple/Nuance partnership? Even MG Siegler from TechCrunch wonders the same thing and based on the timing of an oddly worded Nuance press release, he seems to think so:

Hmm. Nuance seemed to be going out of their way to not say that they were powering the awesome new Siri feature of the iPhone 4S. In fact, it almost reads like a company that just got its hat handed to it by Apple, and wanted to give the “it’s great to see a massive company validate the space” statement.

So I decided to ask the representative directly: is Nuance powering the new Siri feature? The only thing said in response: “Apple licenses Nuance’s voice technology for use in some of its products.” Followed by, ”The company is not authorized to comment on specific capabilities or devices.”

Heh.

In other words, yes, Nuance is powering Siri. But Apple clearly struck a deal with Nuance which precludes them from talking about it. This is Apple technology, this is not about Nuance, is how I imagine Apple may put it. Apparently, Nuance is happy enough with Apple’s undoubtedly large check for this licensing agreement that they are willing to keep quiet.

(Side note: What’s also interesting from Siegler’s article is that Siri tried Vlingo first before settling on Nuance.)

In the past Apple hasn’t been shy to invite partners and developers on stage to toot horns, so why not Nuance in this case?

Is it game over for other speech tech companies?

Nuance is truly the dominating force in this area and with a partner like Apple, it’s reminiscent of the famed Wintel alliance that still exists today…

Today the company announced its NDEV Mobile program which offers its popular Dragon SDK to multiple platforms: Web-based, iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 7. Even the lowest tiered NDEV Silver membership will give a developer plenty of access to Nuance’s popular speech technologies.

And NDEV Silver is free. Yup, get ready to see many, many occurrences of people talking to their phones in the coming months…

See Nuance’s press release:

Burlington, Mass. – September 27, 2011 – Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) today announced that its Nuance Mobile Developer Program, now NDEV Mobile, features new services that make it easier than ever for developers to voice-enable apps with Nuance’s industry leading speech technology. NDEV Mobile now features three new service tiers – Silver, Gold, and Emerald – that give developers more choice and flexibility in how they bring Dragon-powered innovations to market. The Dragon Mobile SDK made available through the NDEV Mobile program now also supports Windows Phone 7 in addition to Android and iOS, as well as an HTTP web services interface, and, brings developers eight new languages for voice recognition.

NDEV Mobile has already experienced great success since its launch in January, 2011, with more than 4,000 iOS and Android developers signing on to access the Dragon Mobile SDK across the US, Europe, Asia, and Australia. This success has led to demand for even more flexibility and support in bringing voice-enabled applications to market. As such, NDEV Mobile now features three new tiers of service to better meet the diverse needs of the broader mobile developer community:

• NDEV Silver: NDEV Silver Services provide Android, Windows Phone 7 and iOS app developers with the ability to deploy their apps for free with the accuracy and reliability that only Nuance can provide. Developers will also have free access to Nuance’s connected text-to-speech (TTS) capabilities in over 30 languages, bringing natural sounding read back of text in the cloud. Further, NDEV Silver members get access to Bluetooth use cases and hands-free voice applications.NDEV Silver Services members have access to the world’s highest quality speech recognition technology for both general dictation and search. Additionally, the Dragon Mobile Developer Center provides a centralized resource for speech information and expertise including on-line forums, code samples, and full documentation.
• NDEV Gold: NDEV Gold Services offer access to SSL data encryption, more deployment flexibility and enhanced support. In addition to iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 7, Gold Services members can take advantage of Nuance’s HTTP web service interface, which extends the power of Dragon to any mobile device while giving developers greater control over the user interface.NDEV Gold Services members’ applications can take advantage of SSL for encrypted data transmission, as well as open access to analytics tools that will help them maximize the impact and effectiveness of the voice experience their app delivers. Further, Gold Services members have access to one-on-one Nuance assistance in addition to the NDEV Mobile online community resources.
• NDEV Emerald: NDEV Emerald Services are designed to meet the unique needs of NDEV Mobile community members looking for a truly differentiated speech experience on their apps. NDEV Emerald members have an array of customization and service options that bring Nuance’s extensive speech expertise and service capabilities to a diverse developer base – ranging from start-ups to wireless carriers, OEMs, and large enterprises. Emerald Services include custom vocabularies and grammars, user experience consulting, speech integration, advanced text-to-speech, high-availability deployment, and unmatched Nuance support – pre and post deployment, including dedicated account management resources.

Available to all NDEV Silver, Gold, and Emerald members, are eight new speech-to-text languages supported by the Dragon Mobile SDK – Canadian French, Americas Spanish, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Korean, Taiwan Mandarin, and Cantonese – in addition to already supporting US, Australian and UK English, European Spanish, European French, German, Italian, Mandarin Chinese, and Japanese for dictation and search. Additional languages will continue to be added through the end of the year, offering developers broader geographic expansion and availability of their innovative voice-enabled apps across the globe.

“The success of our NDEV Mobile developer program has proven that our market-leading voice capabilities drive incredible value for developers across a variety of markets,” said Michael Thompson, senior vice president and general manager, Nuance Mobile. “Our new multi-tiered services options deliver developers the options and services they’ve been asking for. It’s never been easier to deliver the power of voice-enabled apps to the market, tailored and customized to meet the needs of each app’s unique consumer base.”

NDEV Mobile has voice-enabled some of the market’s most popular apps, including Siri, Price Check by Amazon, Ask for iPhone, Merriam-Webster, Dictionary.com, RemoteLink from OnStar, SpeechTrans, Yellow Pages and AirYell from Avantar, iTranslate, Taskmind, SayHi Translate, Vocre, Bon’App, and many others.

 The Dragon Mobile SDK is available for iOS 4.0 (iPhone/iPad/iPod touch), Android 2.1 and higher, Windows Phone 7.1 and via an HTTP web services interface. For more information about the NDEV Silver, Gold, and Emerald Services, please visit the NDEV Mobile developer portal at dragonmobile.nuancemobiledeveloper.com

Dragon has long been a leading speech recognition application on the desktop, used by millions of people around the world. Nuance has launched an array of Dragon applications across a variety of mobile platforms including iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone 7, and more.

To learn more, visit www.nuancemobilelife.com.

Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) is a leading provider of voice and language solutions for businesses and consumers around the world.  Its technologies, applications and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming the way people interact with devices and systems. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuance’s proven applications.  For more information, please visitwww.nuance.com.

Nuance and the Nuance logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States of America and/or other countries. All other company names or product names may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

The statements in this press release relating to future plans, events or services, are forward-looking statements which are subject to specific risks and uncertainties. There are a number of factors which could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those indicated in such forward looking statements, including fluctuations in demand for the Nuance products, and the continued development of Nuance products. The reader is warned not to rely on these forward-looking statements without reservation, since these are simply reflections of the current situation. Nuance disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of developments occurring after the date of this document.

Earlier this month, there was the rumor about Telecom Italia offloading its speech services arm Loquendo. Then on August 13, The Washington Post reported Loquendo being sold to Nuance for $75.5 million.

However, as of the date and time of this post, neither Loquendo or Nuance has this information on their websites. The press release came from Telecom Italia:

Telecom Italia has announced the sale of its 99.98% stake in Loquendo to U.S. company Nuance Communications, Inc. on the basis of an enterprise value of €53 million.

The sale of Loquendo, a 2001 voice technology spin-off from Telecom Italia’s research labs with a workforce of around 100, is part of a process of rationalization of the Group’s shareholdings and a shift of focus toward its core business.

Nuance is committed to keeping the company’s headquarters in Turin, and creating a global centre of excellence in voice technology R&D and reinforcing its collaboration with Italian universities.

The deal is expected to close around the end of September.

Rome, 13 August 2011

I wasn’t able to attend SpeechTEK NYC this year, but here’s what I gathered based on a couple of on-site sources and my own digging…

• Thumbs down on the first keynote speech, “Responding to the Voice of the Constituent/Customer” by David Gergen. Inviting a senior political analyst from CNN to open an event tailored to speech tech may not have been the best idea. Echoing throughout the conference were comments such as “Ten minutes of useful information with 40 minutes of fluff.” (Sounds like CNN…)
• Nuance Dragon Go! was a hit. This mobile app for the Apple iOS was released in mid-July and combines Nuance’s Dragon voice recognition engine with natural language understanding to deliver the most relevant content based on a user’s voice query.
• Microsoft Xbox with Kinect crashed. From what I’ve been told, it crashed “a few times” during the Microsoft Tellme VIP Event. Attendees got to witness what a core dump on a projection screen looks like. (Not good.)
• Vendors continue to push cloud and voice biometrics. Everybody’s still talking about the cloud. It’s here and it’s here to stay. Companies are utilizing it, and cloud vendors are making money from it. Get ready for the next big thing: voice biometrics.
• Interactions, Inc. — the best IVR nobody’s heard of? This Boston-based company just secured $12 million in new funding. Check out their online demos. Almost too good to be true?
• Smaller venue, less attendees, less tweets. Is the economy taking a toll on the industry?

Speech tech leader Nuance is basking in some positively stellar publicity lately, mostly riding on the buzz about Apple’s upcoming iOS 5, Mac OS X “Lion” and the mega data center situated in a remote North Carolina town. The latest Apple mobile and desktop operating systems are said to have some deep integration to speech services from Nuance.

After years of mergers, acquisitions, and lawsuits, Nuance has finally struck gold with the Apple partnership. Forget telecom and IVRs — mobile consumer technology is where the bling is. Smartphone and tablet sales will no doubt exceed that of IVRs and speech servers.

Nuance and the speech industry in general have an intriguing history.

Things really took shape when four major players emerged in the 1990s: Lernout & Hauspie, Nuance, ScanSoft, and SpeechWorks. Back then the Internet was just blossoming, CPU, RAM, and storage were still expensive, and nobody’s heard of cloud computing yet. Speech innovation was highly dependent on the Ph.D. talents and R&D money. So naturally, companies with the thicker cash stash gained an advantage.

ScanSoft picked up some notable deals: Lernout & Hauspie (December 2001, filed for bankruptcy; Dragon Systems was acquired previously by L&H), SpeechWorks (August 2003), and LocusDialog (January 2004). In the span of three years the industry consolidated to just two big players: Nuance and ScanSoft.

Then in September 2005 a merger was announced between them, and the new entity to be called Nuance Communications.

Now came an acquisition binge, thanks to CEO Paul Ricci. Since 2000 there were 43 acquisitions. Some of the better-known buys included: Dictaphone (March 2006), Tegic Communications (August 2007), Jott Networks (July 2009), Spinvox (December 2009), and MacSpeech (February 2010).

Growth through M&A was just part of the story. Nuance was also busy in the courts fighting its up-and-coming, lesser-known competitors. One such unlucky competitor was Vlingo. According to a BusinessWeek article in May by author Peter Burrows:

“Competing with Nuance is like having a venereal disease that’s in remission,” says Dave Grannan, CEO of Vlingo, a speech-recognition startup that’s involved in five Ricci-related lawsuits. (Nuance has four suits against Vlingo; Vlingo has one against Nuance.) “We crush them whenever we go head-to-head with them. But just when you’re thinking life is great—boom, there’s a sore on your lip.”

Vlingo’s adventures with Ricci began in 2008, soon after Yahoo! (YHOO) chose Vlingo software over Nuance. Three months later, Grannan learned from a Boston Globe reporter that Nuance had filed a patent suit—without contacting the company to discuss royalties. “It was clearly an effort to hurt our business,” says Grannan, who expects to spend $15 million on legal fees. Nuance spokesperson Rebecca Paquette said neither Ricci nor the company would comment on specific lawsuits against Vlingo or others. “In these highly technical fields, many companies attempt to gain advantage by simply using Nuance’s inventions rather than developing their own,” she wrote in an e-mail. “We have a duty to our stockholders to preserve the value of the company and its assets.”

By summer 2009, with Vlingo running out of cash, according to Grannan, Ricci approached him about an acquisition. On Sept. 21, they met in San Francisco for a 14-hour negotiation. No agreement. Two days later, Ricci surprised Grannan and Vlingo co-founder Mike Phillips by calling to offer two more alternatives. First, Ricci promised to pay them and co-founder John Nguyen $5 million each if they could persuade their board to sell at his price. If that failed, and the three execs agreed to jump ship to Nuance, he’d pay them the amount they would have received in an acquisition—plus another $5 million if they stayed with the company for two years. As Ricci talked over speakerphone, Grannan says he looked at Phillips, mouthed “What the f—?”, and asked Ricci to repeat. Ricci, who speaks in the measured tones of an academic, obliged. After notifying Vlingo’s board of the offer, Grannan called Ricci back to express the board’s displeasure. “I was flabbergasted,” says Vlingo board member Bob Davoli. “I’ve been on 55 boards in my career and been a CEO twice—but I’ve never heard of anything like this.”

Vlingo’s board later accepted a $15 million investment in the company, after Ricci suggested that such a deal would align their interests and lead to a cessation of hostilities, says Davoli. “That was wishful thinking,” he says. Rather than drop the lawsuits, Ricci stopped taking Grannan’s phone calls. When Vlingo’s board stopped admitting a Nuance-appointed director to its board meetings, Nuance sued for the right to attend.

And guess what? Nuance is still knocking at Vlingo’s door: TechCrunch recently reported a new patent infringement lawsuit.

Tellme Networks also found itself enduring the wrath of Ricci in 2006:

In late 2006, Ricci took a run at a customer—Tellme Networks, which made an automated telephone-response system. Ricci had just purchased a company that made speech software used by Tellme. Mike McCue, Tellme’s then-CEO, says he was contacted by Ricci, who declared he’d sue Tellme, introduce a competing product, and refuse to sell it more software unless Tellme’s board agreed to sell to Nuance at Ricci’s price. “It was an all-out attack on every front,” says McCue, who now runs Flipboard, maker of a popular news app. McCue did sell the company in 2007—to Microsoft (MSFT), for a far higher price. (Press reports had it at around $800 million.) A court later dismissed Nuance’s patent claims as invalid. “We were able to outlast Nuance,” says McCue. “But a lot of companies can’t handle the pressure and give in. It’s happened time and again.” Ricci declined to comment on dealings with Tellme or Vlingo.

Nuance’s aggressive tactics aren’t just reserved for U.S. companies, either. The founder of an Indian speech company told me a story about his ordeal with Nuance. After being contracted to develop an application for Nuance, it poached the co-founder to work as an employee. (He left for Nuance within two months after being his business partner for nine years.) To add insult to injury, Nuance pre-emptively served legal notice in fear of a lawsuit going after this co-founder and his new employer. Efforts failed to negotiate a more reasonable, smoother transition for the co-founder to jump ship.

David vs. Goliath in the speech industry. David usually loses. From bleeding money and resources.

Indeed, from the BusinessWeek article:

Nuance’s Paul Ricci built the dominant speech-recognition company with engineering, acquisitions—and a lot of lawsuits.

TechCrunch is reporting that Apple and Nuance have been talking in recent months — most likely about a partnership:

Apple has been negotiating a deal with Nuance in recent months, we’ve heard from multiple sources. What does that mean? Well, it could mean an acquisition, but that is looking fairly unlikely at this point, we hear. More likely, it means a partnership that will be vital to both companies and could shape the future of iOS.

If you’ve worked with contact center applications in the past few years, you’re probably somewhat familiar with speech technology, and no doubt have heard of Nuance. Coming from a contact center background, it’s sort of refreshing to hear and use speech recognition on my smartphone. Google even baked speech reco into its latest Chrome browser (run a cool demo here, Chrome 11 required).

Late last year Apple posted open positions for voice and speech experts, and now six months later there are rumors of a possible acquisition or partnership deal with Nuance, the top speech technology vendor.

Yes, speech technology is making quite a comeback, especially if it’s catching Apple’s eye.

We’ve all interacted with “them” before — speech-enabled machines to help us navigate IVR menus or take us to a customer service representative. You probably spoke to these machines ten years ago, saying the same words or phrases, to achieve the same results. And today you’re still repeating those words, doing the same things.

In other words, what has speech technology brought us?

Thanks to the miniaturization of processing components, speech recognition software now fits in the palm of your hand such as a mobile phone. Both Android and iOS platforms have some built-in speech capabilities, albeit not very refined. Then there are third-party applications such as Dragon Dictation (made by Nuance) and Siri (acquired by Apple) that complements the operating system’s speech capabilities.

There may be renewed interest in speech tech especially in the mobile consumer space. Recently Apple has been recruiting for speech application engineers, speech recognition engineers, and speech research scientists. And they want people who are already familiar with products like Nuance Recognizer, IBM WebSphere Voice, and Google Voice Search.

Apple is known to propel certain technologies into the mainstream. Maybe 2011 will be the year of speech tech, and one day a business will be able to run a speech IVR on the Android platform.

Nuance is a company that needs no introduction. It is a member of what I call “Big Speech,” which also includes Microsoft Tellme and Loquendo. However, Tellme still has some catching up to do in its enterprise reach, and Loquendo appears better received in European markets. But in the global enterprise market, Nuance enjoys dominance through its worldwide channel partners. It didn’t have a booth at SpeechTEK, but its presence was felt, not only because its marketing directors were hard at work meeting with media members, but the company name was mentioned numerous times during the sessions as well as overheard on the show room floor.

If you have an IVR, it’s very likely that it will work with Nuance speech products.

If you have a hosted IVR, Nuance can work too.

Dedicated speech servers are no longer needed — well, at least not on-premise in the enterprise. As with many other companies dealing with today’s sluggish economic environment, Nuance also has a hosted on-demand solution to help customers cut costs. The company has three PCI-compliant data centers to ensure service delivery and adequate security. Think of it as “speech in the cloud,” without the eavesdropping.

But what sets Nuance On Demand apart, according to Laura Marino (Sr. Director of Product Marketing) and Dena Skrbina (Sr. Director of Solutions Marketing), are the rich analytics features, also on-demand. The analytics offering is also tiered to provide advanced level reports based on a subscription charged by per-minute usage. One important point Marino brings up is that ROI is really gained by applying analytics. To be able to slice and dice the data gleaned from any technology is invaluable to the enterprise.

Enough about on demand solutions. Marino also shared news about SpeechAttendant 11, a niche on-premise product to provide enterprise enhanced auto attendant and directory services. With SpeechAttendant, Nuance wants to increase productivity by making the corporate directory more intelligent using its speech technology and applications. The product can list 400,000 names, searchable via natural language processing and multiple languages. It allows simple IVR-like menus to implement some level of business rules, and is equipped with telephony features such as call forwarding, emergency broadcasting, etc. An auto attendant in a box may not sound like a sexy product, but with the right technologies and interfaces it can indeed become an instrumental productivity tool.