"Microsoft Brings Vision for Mainstream Speech Technology to Life With Launch of Microsoft Speech Server 2004"

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2004/mar04/03-24SpeechServer04LaunchPR.asp' target='_blank'>http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2004/mar04/03-24SpeechServer04LaunchPR.asp</a><br /><br /></div>"Microsoft Corp. today took another step forward in its strategy to make the business value of speech technology more broadly available to mainstream enterprise companies as Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates launched Microsoft® Speech Server 2004 at the co-located AVIOS~SpeechTEK Spring 2004, Microsoft Mobile Developer Conference (DevCon) 2004 and Fawcette Technical Publications' VSLive! San Francisco 2004 events. Speaking to an audience of more than 4,000 during his keynote address, Gates spoke about the developer opportunities and business value Speech Server will enable, which analysts say will change the industry dynamic.<br /><br />...Microsoft is breaking new ground in the speech industry by becoming the first company to offer a single platform that combines Web technologies, speech-processing services and telephony capabilities. The Speech Server enables companies to unify their Web and telephony infrastructure and extend existing or new ASP.NET Web applications for speech-enabled access from telephones, mobile phones, Pocket PCs and Smartphones."<br /><br />I wonder what kind of applications and services we'll see come from this? Put your brainstorming hat on - what sorts of services could you see yourself benefiting from that were based on voice technology?

[Kris Kumar]

I wonder what kind of applications and services we'll see come from this?

Pretty much any app needing data input...order food, bank transactions, submit claims, they were showing apps that can read out emails, schedule appointments (outlook tasks)...I can think of placing Ebay bids, stock sale/purchase, movie info, pay bills..

They also talked about apps which enabled parents to call the school to enquire about their kids grades/performance...and I was thinking of - "wish I were a student now", I will setup a speech server at home with my mom's voice and set it up so that it will answer Principal's call with "my son is sick" routine.


The industry that will benefit the most will be call centers.

The bigger concern is that, right now we have this big debate going on over about outsourcing of call center activity. And with Speech technologies, you can reduce the size of call centers. So not only is outsourcing taking away jobs, speech tech will further reduce the number of humans needed.