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?

Please also check out the first and second part of this series. Remember to contact me if you’d like to share your SpeechTEK experience as a guest blogger.

Wednesday, August 10 is the last day of the conference. Are the best sessions saved till the last?

SD301 – When Clients Become Designers – Carrie Nelson (Sr. Speech Software Engineering Consultant, Avaya)

An interesting topic for consultants. Is there a delicate balance and how to achieve it?

A302 – Recent Changes in Speech Patent Law – K.W. “Bill” Scholz (President, NewSpeech), Mark Webbink (Visiting Profession & Executive Dir., New York Law School), Steven Hoffberg (Partner, Ostrolenk Faber LLP), Marie Meteer (Executive Dir., Speech Technology Consortium), Mark Powell (Dir. Communications Technology Area, USPTO)

There has been lots of news about patents lately: from “patent trolls” targeting independent Apple App Store developers to Google losing out on acquiring Nortel patents to Microsoft’s involvement in Android patents. It appears that tech companies are boosting their firepower in the Patent Battles. Definitely an area to pay attention to in the speech industry as well.

D301 – Innovative Uses of Speech Technology – David Thomson (PMTS, AT&T Labs), Brad Kayton (CEO, Vgo Communications), K.W. “Bill” Scholz (President, NewSpeech)

IVRs, smartphone apps, dictation software, etc. — but what else can speech tech apply to? This session explores speech’s role in robotics and language learning. How cool is that?

My Monday session picks for next week’s SpeechTEK are here.

Now let’s see what’s in store for Tuesday:

Keynote Panel - Mobility — A Game-Changer for Speech? – Daniel Hong (Lead Analyst, Ovum), Bruce Pollock (VP Strategic Growth & Planning, West Interactive), Mike Phillips (CTO, Vlingo), Mazin Gilbert (Executive Dir. Technical Research, AT&T), Vlad Sejnoha (CTO, Nuance)

Moderated by Daniel Hong, this panel features a few leaders in mobile speech. Even since the news broke about the Apple-Nuance partnership, the development of mobile speech has taken center stage. Plus, let’s hope no punches are thrown between Vlingo and Nuance.

A201 - The Role of Speech in Smartphones – Jason P. Hersh (Customer Experience Strategist, RightNow), William Meisel (President, TMA Associates), David John Attwater (Sr. Scientist, EIG UK)

Following the track of mobile speech, moderator Jason Hersh from RightNow will host a panel to dig deeper into the CX/UX perspective.

A202 – Integrating Social Media with Customer Service – Michael Smith (Solutions Architect, Avaya)

Of course there has to be some social media sessions, right? It’s obligatory in today’s conferences. Maybe there will be presentations from multiple vendors about their integrated SM products.

B204 – VUI Design Tools – Dave Pelland (Dir. Innovation & Design, Convergys), Mark Stallings (Voice Solutions Architect, Integrated Voice Solutions), Ed Elrod (Sr. Consultant, EIG)

It’ll be interesting to see how design tools have evolved and how they compare.

C203 – Call Center Knowledge Management and Automated Help – Joe Alwan (VP & GM, Raytheon BBN Technologies), Karen Torf (Product Manager, RightNow), Mike Monegan (VP Applications, Voxify)

Knowledge management is starting to get more attention. Lithium Technology has gained several major partners and recently Verint acquired Vovici. Besides social media and speech, knowledge management is probably the next push from vendors in terms of enhancing contact center offerings.

D205 – Standard Languages for Implementing Voice Applications – Paolo Baggia (Dir. International Standards, Loquendo), Daniel Burnett (Dir. Speech Tech & Standards, Voxeo)

This ought to be an enlightening session with representatives from two of the most standards conscious vendors in the industry. Be prepared to jot down lots of acronyms — many of which are more than three letters.

Did you know that SpeechTEK 2011 is in NYC next week? I was there last year and had a blast. Not only did I meet with several exhibitors but also got to catch up with a couple of local friends.

Unfortunately, I am unable to attend this year. Yes, I’m quite bummed about it, but I will be in Washington, D.C. area to begin a new chapter of my career.

I’ll definitely be following the #SpeechTEK action on Twitter and via other channels. I also welcome guest posts about this event  – please contact me!

There are so many interesting topics being offered, but here are my picks and comments about the Monday sessions:

SD102 – Voice Mashups and the Rise of APIs – Dan York (Dir. of Communications, Voxeo)

This is definitely a trend in the industry and something to pay attention to. Dan’s employer, Voxeo, is one of the many that’s in the forefront of this trend (e.g. Tropo). Even Google and Alcatel-Lucent are deep in this game. Plus, it’s presented by master blogger and tweeter (Twitterer? Tweep?) Dan York. My advice: make sure you’ve had plenty of caffeine in your veins for this first morning session to keep up with Dan.

SD104 – How to Choose the Right Consultant – Richard Hathaway (Principal Consultant, RLH Telecom Solutions)

Because I’ve been a consultant and would like to see what others say about this. An old previous post sort of touched on this topic.

A104 - Improve Speech Applications Through Customer Feedback – Michael Smith (Solutions Architect, Avaya), Peter Leppik (President/CEO, VocaLabs)

With all the advanced speech technologies at our disposals, little focus has been on effective evaluation and feedback mechanisms. This could to be an eyeopener for many session attendees.

A105 – Effective Use of Local Information – Darla Tucker (Dir. Strategic Customer Solutions, Convergys), Jay Malin (Managing Director, AGENT511), Patrick Ehlen (Lead Software Engineer, AT&T)

Location-aware apps are showing up left and right. From traditional mapping software to social networking sites to daily coupon offerings, there is no escape from this. Your location information is valuable to many companies, and with proper handling that information could enhance your customer service experience. The famous Groupama iPhone app, for example, passes location information to the contact center agent without the user having to take extra steps.

B101 - What Users Expect From Multichannel Self-Service – Jenni McKienzie (Voice Interaction Designer, Travelocity), Lizanne Kaiser (Sr. Principal Business Consultant, Alcatel-Lucent Genesys), Peter Leppik (President/CEO, VocaLabs), Rebecca Nowlin-Green (Principal Business Consultant, Nuance)

Do you really know? These industry experts should be able to shed some light.

C102 - Using Biometrics to Improve Workflow and Prevent Fraud – Valene Skerpac (President, iBiometrics), Julia Webb (EVP Sales & Marketing, VoiceVault), Nik Stanbridge (Dir. Product Marketing, VoiceVault)

Some would say that biometrics technology is still in its infancy, but this infant is surely growing up fast. It is something that’s starting to show up on many vendor’s radar.

D102 - Make Better Decisions With Multichannel Analytics – Grant Shirk (Dir. Industry Solutions, Microsoft), Daniel Ziv (VP Customer Interaction Analytics, Verint), Dan York (Dir. of Conversations, Voxeo)

If you’re involved in a multichannel contact center deployment, no doubt that you’ve amassed gigantic amounts of data about the customer and the interaction. Then what???

Stay tuned in the coming days for my Tuesday and Wednesday picks…

Need to catch up on this week’s posts on insideCTI? Allow me to do you a favor here and save you some clicking…

InsideCTI wrapped up the SpeechTEK 2010 coverage earlier this week with a climatic “Tidbits” post. Check out the photos all taken with the iPhone 4, which sadly doesn’t really work around Times Square. The highlight of the trip? Paying homage to Apple at its Fifth Ave. Store. Wait, I take that back — the highlight was definitely meeting all the good folks in person since we’d last seen each other at previous other conferences.

The 2600hz Project also came into the spotlight. Hooray for another open source telephony software project! Seriously, this world can never get enough of open source stuff. Thumbs up, guys!

I weighed in somewhat pessimistically on the Polycom-Microsoft partnership announcement. Let’s just say that I deemed the “F” in UCIF as something other than “Forum.” Is the world ready for Microsoft Communications Server “14″?

By far the biggest news to break this week was Voxeo acquiring Teleku. The news broke on the night of Wednesday, August 11 — I just happened to check Twitter that night, otherwise I would’ve missed it. Even its official press released specified August 12 as the announcement date. Voxeo continues its shopping spree — what’s next in the competitive Web/cloud telephony space?

As always, readers like you are what keeps the site ticking! Feel free to leave comments on the blog, join our Facebook page, and follow our Twitter feed.

My dream was finally realized when I attended my first SpeechTEK in NYC last week. How about some nice NYC pictures first? My favorite? Mecca (aka Apple Store 5th Avenue). Yes, there are still people in line waiting on the iPad and iPhone 4.

For anyone in the contact center industry this conference has always been a big deal. It’s even more interesting when it was co-located with the CRM Evolution conference because I heard stories of people walking into the wrong sessions. Instead of learning speech technology, they were bombarded with social media stuff. Ha!

A couple of MIAs left conference goers scratching their heads. First, Salesforce.com decided not to be part of CRM Evolution. Funny thing is, I saw them at ACCE in New Orleans a few months ago, and that was a lesser known event. Denis Pombriant thought it was a mistake on their part to forgo attendance. I cannot pinpoint the reason behind Salesforce.com’s absence, but judging from its attendance in the earlier yet lesser known ACCE Conference, it’s probably not that it cannot afford CRM Evolution. Looking on its website the upcoming events are almost all overseas, which means Salesforce.com is pushing hard to expand into the Asian market. Is it because of the lethargic economy in the U.S.? Maybe it’s decided to focus on overseas markets where there’s at least better growth opportunities, and let its competitors undercut each other in the domestic market.

The other MIA at SpeechTEK was Nuance Communications, even though their marketing force was present. Of course, one good thing about being the market leader is that others will spread the gospel for you. I’m sure most exhibitors were tired of hearing, “Will your product work with Nuance?” throughout the show floor. So yeah, why spend the money for a booth.

So who did I think wasted their money? Probably Cisco. The Cisco booth was boring — it didn’t even have a proper Cisco logo — and the setup reminded me of a high school science fair. Whatever happened to the Cisco I saw at VoiceCon Orlando?! Only one word to describe Cisco’s SpeechTEK efforts: Meh.

West Interactive, having purchased Holly Connects and TuVox recently, decided not to incorporate their products at its booth demos. That was a shame. I think having Holly and TuVox represented at the booth would’ve been a good move. Unless, of course, there’s some turmoil and re-organization going on that prevented such an arrangement. I can’t say I was surprised when a source tipped me that most of TuVox management has been or will be let go.

To my surprise I also bumped into Tim Barnes, founder of OpenMethods, my former employer. We had a few minutes to catch up, and I’m just glad to see him all smiles. (And it wasn’t the wine.)

Ovum analyst Ian Jacobs was kind to spare a few minutes of his busy schedule to speak with me about his presentation at CRM Evolution: Location-based Info Points The Way to Mobile Customer Interactions. And judging from the writeup at DestinatioCRM.com, perhaps I’d be wise not to invite Ian to be my Foursquare friend… That’s quite okay, there are many other people (not really) who are interested in where I buy my 2% milk!

In the end, I think the two — okay, maybe three — companies that are going to make lots of splashes during the remainder of the year are: Angel, Voxeo, and RightNow Technologies. I’ve found these companies to be laser-focused in their perspective business segments; Angel and RightNow have even decided to rebrand themselves to deliver a clearer message.

For me it’s always exciting to meet with company representatives to learn about the latest products and services. But I must say that it’s even more valuable to re-connect with industry acquaintances and friends, and get their perspectives on what’s going on.

You may not have heard of Montreal-based Nu Echo, but that’s probably because you’re American. The company is well-known in Canada and boasts major customers there — Air Canada, RBC Financial, and Telus, just as a sampling. The company bills itself as speech experts and certainly has the DNA and projects to back up that claim.

Yves Normandin, CEO of Nu Echo, founded the company in 2002. Prior to that, he was founder and CTO of LocusDialog. Yes, that LocusDialog which was bought by ScanSoft which merged with Nuance. So if there’s anyone who knows speech — the technology and the business — it’s him.

The company firmly believes that speech technology has been wrongfully accused of damaging user experience. It has faith in speech technology because it knows it inside and out. Nu Echo’s expertise lies in developing tools and performance tuning to speech systems so that their full benefit is realized. Much like an automobile, a speech system requires regular maintenance to achieve its best performance.

Aside from professional services, Nu Echo has four distinct products: NuGram, NuBot, NuAddress, and NuID:

• NuGram – A complete grammar development platform, based on open source Eclipse framework.
• NuBot – Originally devised as an internal tool for testing, now productized as a hosted IVR application test solution. Monitoring features to come soon.
• NuAddress – The leading Canadian address capture solution in the industry, the result of over three years of R&D.
• NuID – An application to provide automated identity authentication, something that contact centers do every day. NuID is highly optimized and specialized just for this purpose and is able to achieve over 90% success rate.

The 20-person company is heavy on the developer side, so expect it to produce new tools and products regularly. The company advocates “test-driven development,” an approach that some other firms find hard to swallow (or willingly ignore). However, as Nu Echo’s track records have proven, this approach fits speech app development perfectly. Add on top Nu Echo’s obsession with performance tuning and monitoring, and you would get an ironclad speech app deployment.

Normandin is also eager to expand its business south of the border. So, my fellow Americans, prepare your speech systems for the invasion…

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.

If there’s something weird, and it don’t look good — Who ya gonna call? …GhostBusters!

That is, if you’re dealing with ghouls and ghosts. What if you just want to make sure the contact center project is adequately implemented to handle real-world loads?

Empirix Hammer is who you’d call, of course.

Most folks are familiar with the company and its flagship product, known for load/stress testing IVRs, CTI systems, and agent workstations. But as the contact center evolved to adopt technologies such as virtualization, VOIP, SIP, and cloud computing, Empirix found itself becoming more than just a Hammer company. For a SpeechTEK exhibitor without a speech product, Empirix was there to tout its comprehensive list of quality assurance products and services — for speech-enabled systems or otherwise.

Tim Moynihan, VP of Marketing for Contact Center Solutions, framed the situation: It’s all about the impact of data in today’s contact centers. Virtualization? Data. VOIP? Data. SIP trunking? Data. Cloud computing? Data. Just about any new technology being deployed in the contact center today floods the network with more data. So besides worrying about external loads to the contact center systems, what about the internal infrastructure supporting them? Are the LAN and WAN able to keep up with the data-intensive demands of the 2010 contact center?

Enter Empirix. When it advertises cradle-to-grave testing, it really means it regardless of the medium (TDM or IP). Add to it performance monitoring, such as its OneSight for Contact Centers, which actively measures voice quality in the enterprise to aide optimization and troubleshooting of networks. Or in the words of Bob Hockman, Director of Product Marketing, Empirix aims to “get it right and keep it right.”

And that’s much more important in today’s economic environment. The contact center is often a company’s first line of defense — and sometimes, offense — in the business world. Ensuring a well-oiled contact center can mean millions of dollars worth of savings. As Moynihan points out, testing shouldn’t be about firefighting; it ought to be strategic.

To make its offerings more attractive to enterprises of various sizes, Empirix now has a leasing program which its equipment will reside on-site and the customer pays for subscription. What it calls TaaS, or Testing-as-a-Service. This solution definitely allows the customer to keep it right after getting it right.

Angel.com has finally gotten over the dot-com era and rebranded itself simply as Angel with a nice logo of a wing. Its website still mentions Angel.com on several pages, but I’d imagine that’ll be corrected soon after SpeechTEK.

The company, a subsidiary of MicroStrategy, has always been a major player in cloud solutions. At SpeechTEK it unveiled the Angel 4 Customer Experience Platform, enabling the customer to create multichannel and multimodal applications with SMS, chat, voice biometrics, and mobile management features.

Thanks to close partnerships with the likes of Nuance, Holly Connects (recently acquired by West Interactive), and VoiceVault, Angel can offer a robust cloud platform in tune with the latest customer demands of speech and biometrics technology. According to David Toliver, Sr. Manager of Marketing & Communications, what really sets Angel apart from its competitors is its business intelligence analytics. That’s not surprising as MicroStrategy is one of the top BI vendors in the industry, and it only makes sense to incorporate that into Angel 4. And judging by the tremendous interest in analytics during this year’s SpeechTEK, Angel 4 is attracting a lot of attention.

Interestingly, Toliver revealed that customers aren’t pushing for social media integration at this point, although it is on the roadmap for the platform. That’s definitely a contrast to what went on at the co-conference, CRM Evolution.

Angel press release here:

New York, NY, SpeechTEK Conference – August 2, 2010 – Angel^SM, a leading provider of enterprise focused, cloud based, customer engagement solutions, today announced the new Angel 4SM Customer Experience Platform, incorporating multi-channel/multi-modal forms of customer engagement and communications, including SMS, chat, voice biometrics and mobile management, to dramatically improve levels of enterprise customer self-service and satisfaction. At the SpeechTEK 2010 conference today, the company launched the new IVR and contact center platform along with the renaming of the company to Angel from Angel.com (www.angel.com).

The Angel 4 Customer Experience Platform leverages Angel’s unique Caller First strategy to help customer-driven organizations consistently deliver a superior caller experience. As a cloud-based on-demand platform, it is extremely easy to use and universally accessible from anywhere, including smart mobile phones. With embedded business intelligence from MicroStrategy®, it measures, reports, and easily enables fine tuning in real time to optimize customer interactions.

The new multi-modal communication capabilities enable a rich suite of communication channel options and customer experience application plug-ins to bring enterprises closer to their customers, all securely and seamlessly. Channel options include SMS, chat, web, mobile, e-mail, and phone communications. Plug-in options include voice biometrics, name and address capture, phone payment solutions, seamless CRM integration, workforce management, real-time transcription, and computer telephony integration.

“We continue to provide industry innovation to deliver a unified system that is on-demand, very easy to use, fully integrated, and dynamic,” said David Rennyson, President of Angel. “The Angel 4 Customer Experience Platform offers enterprise customers built-in business intelligence and multi-modal communications channels for optimal interaction and satisfaction.”

To support its ongoing large-enterprise customer base, the company has changed its name to Angel, with accompanying new rebranding and web site. “Our new name and look reflect the evolution and growth of our company to support some of the biggest enterprise brands in their respective industries,” added Rennyson.

Angel offers a complete suite of IVR and contact center applications that enable customers to easily build, manage, and make updates via a simple Internet connection. Because the Angel platform is a fully on-demand solution, no investment in hardware, software, or staffing is required. The new platform allows customers to launch custom applications and automate multi-channel interactions in a fraction of the time required with traditional on-premise solutions. The company also offers a white label solution to channel partners such as Qwest to deliver the same benefits under a privately branded solution.

Angel is co-presenting today at the SpeechTEK 2010 luncheon for conference attendees with customer AstraZeneca on the benefits in containment, lead generation, and millions in savings that can be achieved, and will be demonstrating the new features of the platform at the conference exhibition.

The Angel 4 Customer Experience Platform is available immediately – please go to www.angel.com for more information.

About Angel
Angel is a leading provider of enterprise focused, cloud based, customer engagement solutions, including Caller First focused Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and Call Center solutions. These solutions enable enterprise organizations to quickly deploy voice, SMS, chat and business intelligence applications. More than 1,600 customers worldwide turn to Angel’s proprietary customer engagement technology to power customer experience, marketing and sales needs. Angel’s solutions are built on an on-demand, Software as a Service (SaaS) platform and require no investment in hardware, software, or human resources, balancing the need for high quality communications with affordable pay-as-you-go pricing.

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