August 2008 Archives

Picking up where we left off yesterday...

 

On Tuesday, I had the chance to attend SpeechTek, and visit with some of the leading companies in the space.

 

Among those companies was Nortel, who previewed their forthcoming Interactive Communications Portal, which will be available later this year (expect more news in the November time frame).

 

The product will leverage Nortel's service oriented architecture (SOA) strategy, as well as the company's service creation environment in an effort to help "take VoiceXML to the next level."

 

A software-only self service solution running native SIP, ICP is designed to simplify the process of getting up and running and it will appear to the network like just another SIP device. The solution will offer support for both multimodal multimedia (with support for video) and will also support conferencing.

 

According to Nortel, six areas were important to them and to their customers when the product was designed and conceptualized:

 

According to Nortel officials, their drive is to make it easier for people to create and use applications as well as support something they call Customer Experience 2.0, whereby customers can expand on traditional methods of customer interaction to ensure that their customers in turn have an easier time getting to the information they need.

 

The solution also offers a "Melding of Web 2.0 with customer contact technology."

 

Following Nortel, we met with executives from IBM and IBM Research to discuss what they were up to in the speech space. We were treated to a bit of a history lesson going back a decade or so to when IBM was focused on dictation (ViaVoice) and serving the consumer space. Well they changed their tack and switched gears to focus on server and embedded-base opportunities with their WebSphere voice server and embedded Via Voice strategies.

 

IBM sees ample opportunities beyond the telecommunications market as evidenced by their success in the automotive market. IBM officials told us that over 10 million cars use their embedded technology, and more news is on the way regarding that market.

 

Officials admitted that telecom has been a bit tougher to break and steal market share away from other firms in the space, but that they continue to innovate and remain relevant, keeping their name in play.

 

Speech will become a natural element of each product IBM will have, but it's unknown when this will come to fruition. It is definitely a long term view.

 

Still, for IBM Research speech is rapidly growing and expanding and emerging in other areas such as Mobile Internet, Collaboration/Unified Messaging, Speech analytics, and Optimization.

 

As part of speech and IBM Research, we try to stick to IBM core values, a key part of which is to ride the continuing trend of globalization.

 

Emerging economies continue to be a major focus of IBM as well. IBM officials told us that many of these emerging economies are jumping over PCs, leapfrogging to smartphone technology, enabling access to the richest sources of information available.

 

However, many of the people in these emerging markets face hurdles relating to limited rates of literacy. Many of these people can't read and write. This has engendered the notion that the GUI Web that we all know and love is inaccessible to many of these folks.

 

At IBM Research, lab efforts are underway to address their needs and create the Spoken Web. The potential to address a market of 1.5 billion people who have low literacy levels or low ability to use GUI-based devices while mobile is certainly a meaningful opportunity.

 

Next up was Avaya, who preannounced their Voice Portal 5, which is scheduled for release in Q109. Officials told us that the upcoming release builds on what they have released over the past three years.

 

The solution will leverage Web services and is designed with Information Technology (IT) folks and line of business owners in mind.

 

It's all software and will enable these constituents to "Webify" their infrastructure and allow them to add a layer of speech and interactivity while enabling them to leverage investments and extend them out to the market to customers.

 

The forthcoming solution gives developers the ability to support SMIL and allows customers to dynamically overlay text inside any variable in XML. This allows them the ability to combine different elements to serve the customer with a rich set of tools. For example, developers can create a variety of applications, including the ability to stream content from other sources, such as news, weather, etc...

 

And of course, the solution is based on SIP.

 

Cisco is another player who made news with their customer voice portal. Video was the big addition to Cisco's offering, and, as officials told us, in self service, one size doesn't always fit all. In some cases, a speech-based interface is ok; in other cases DTMF input is acceptable, but there exists a need for video as well, to offer users true multimodal interaction capability.

 

Some of the examples cited were kiosks in specific verticals such as big box retail as well as financial (bank branches) and healthcare.

 

Cisco is also watching the developing trend of the increasing proliferation of 3G Mobile and the uptake of video enabled mobile devices in the Asia/Pacific and Gulf regions.

 

Cisco officials cited interesting use cases for video, and mentioned the benefits of presenting information visually at a glance when appropriate, and then giving way to DTMF or speech enabled input as needed.

 

We also got some scoop about an upcoming solution that Cisco plans to unveil in early September, which would allow presence enabled knowledge workers to be easily brought in to help with a customer call if the customer requires specific expertise.

 

The solution will essentially leverage a worker's presence status combined with routing rules to identify an expert and check their availability. When deployed with a traditional contact center or even in standalone fashion, this solution would enable agents to find the most qualified assistance to a particular question automatically, allowing the agent to focus on the task at hand, thus keeping the customer happier and the agent more productive.

 

For more on the companies we met with at SpeechTek, as well as an update into what went down in Huntsville, Alabama, check back later.

 

Long day today.

 

Fitting end (almost) to a busy week, replete with travel.

 

Monday was Boston and the Channel Partners Conference.

 

Tuesday was Manhattan and SpeechTek.

 

Wednesday was an opportunity to catch up back in the office in Norwalk, CT.

 

And today was a travel/meeting/dinner day in Huntsville, Alabama.

 

...via Nashville.

 

Let's see if my memory is up to the task this evening...

 

On Monday we met with Michael Storella, Director of U.S. Business Development for IP phone maker snom. Among the things we discussed were the company's new initiatives, including an OCS related solution, which according to Storella should help snom open up some opportunities in the large enterprise market. As he said, the initiative "...opens up conversations with Fortune 500-types, where we generally hadn't had these contacts before. They're trying us out." Storella maintains a positive outlook regarding this particular opportunity.

 

That same evening we sat down for a chat with Steven Kokinos, CEO of Thinking Phone Networks.

 

Thinking Phone is a provider of hosted PBX services, and they are huge believers in the open systems approach. As Kokinos explained, open systems provide benefits to businesses, and (leveraging those systems) Thinking Phone is able to provide rich business intelligence and management reporting tools (dashboards) to their customers.

 

Thinking Phone believes reporting is one of the key differentiators that places their solution above the competition. Their solution provides reports addressing the underlying things management wants to see -- sales and support -- and offers the ability to quantify the amount of effort being expended and how effective those interactions are.

 

In fact, Kokinos believes that his company is among only a few hosted providers that can fulfill the requirement of offering businesses high levels of visibility into their operations.

 

Visibility into business is a core element that people are looking to do a better job at; and things like activity logging, tracking, etc..., are a key focus for Thinking Phone.

 

Tomorrow, I'll catch you up on what I saw and who I spoke with at SpeechTek, as well as give you some insight into what I was doing in Huntsville.

 

 

Saw this news item about Interactive Intelligence's "Outrageous Interactions" contest and how it's nearing the deadline for submissions.

 

It's a very entertaining concept that offers a fun look inside the contact center industry by allowing agents to share their most memorable customer interactions.

 

"Everyone hears about the consumer side of an interaction gone bad," says Joe Staples, senior vice president of worldwide marketing for Interactive Intelligence and the creative brain behind the contest. "We thought it would be appropriate to turn the tables and take a look at what experiences the contact center agents have had. And after seeing some of the entries, the word outrageous is a good descriptor."

 

The contest has been promoted for some time now. In fact, in his Ask the Expert column in Customer Interaction Solutions' July issue, Tim Passios, Interactive Intelligence's Director of Solutions Marketing, offered this example of a unique and memorable agent experience:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I can't wait to see the best entries!

 

But the deadline is fast approaching.

 

Visit www.OutrageousInteractions.com by August 31st to submit an entry. Or visit the site between September 8th and September 16th to read the short list of finalists and vote for your favorite.

While I was down in the Dallas metropolitan area this week, I had the opportunity to meet with a number of companies including Irving-based NEC.

 

My colleagues and I were treated to a wonderful tour of the NEC Executive Briefing Center, which features many of NEC's offerings that are available to enterprises today.

 

There were several new and unexpected items on the tour; these products will be announced in the coming weeks. But of course the tour showcased much of NEC's product line including their latest endpoints, a small form factor, thin-client PC, their new storage solution, and the various productivity enhancing applications that the company is well known for.

 

The tour also brought us 'round to two demonstration areas focusing on NEC solutions as applied to a pair of specific vertical markets: Hospitality and Healthcare. As expected these demo rooms were outfitted with the latest devices and applications designed to improve the experience for patients and medical staff in the case of the healthcare demo, and hotel guests and the staff that services them in the hospitality demo.

 

Regarding what's coming down the pike, all I can say right now is that NEC is partnering with a well known networking company to provide a product that will help enable remote workers to be more productive.

 

Their channel will have the product in hand by mid-August and will start reselling the solution, so we have to wait a bit longer for official word of the new solution.

 

NEC also showed us a prototype of the next version of an enterprise communications server that's still in customer trials and should be announced by the mid-to-end of August. The solution is designed as a pure IP play, supporting all existing applications such as voice, mobility, and unified communications.

 

The product will offer a smooth migration path for existing customers who wish to move to an all-IP infrastructure.

 

Lastly, NEC officials told us to watch out for several new solutions spanning the following areas: speech, video voice mail, and some new things from the Sphere acquisition of one year ago.

 

The NEC folks told me that, in terms of trends, they're seeing healthy activity in the hospitality and healthcare markets. Also they say that unified communications is generating lots of traction in the SMB market as well.