Microsoft Acquires Technology Assets From Unveil Technologies

Microsoft believes that, when integrated into the Speech Server platform, Unveil’s learn-by-example and agent assist technologies will make it easier, faster and less expensive for customers to develop and optimize speech applications.

“Unveil’s technology is a natural fit with Speech Server because it is in line with our vision of making speech applications affordable and easy to develop and maintain,” said Rich Bray, general manager of the Speech Server group at Microsoft. “By supplementing our toolset with Conversation Suite technologies, even a nontechnical call-center manager can prototype and develop robust speech applications.”

“Technology like Unveil’s Conversation Suite helps make speech recognition systems even more efficient and beneficial for companies looking for ways to improve their contact centers,” said Art Schoeller, senior analyst for Yankee Group. “Integrating this technology into a larger platform such as Speech Server is a natural extension for both companies and will have a positive outcome for customers.”

As part of the acquisition, Microsoft will hire certain key Unveil development employees. Unveil’s existing customers will have the opportunity to participate in future programs that include the acquired technology.

Part of the Windows Server System™, Microsoft Speech Server is a Web-based, speech-enabled interactive voice response and multimodal application solutions platform. As a Speech Application Language Tags (SALT)-based solution, Speech Server follows the Web application deployment model, using an ASP.NET-based Web server as the application server. The two main components of the Microsoft Speech Server platform are the Telephony Application Services and Speech Engine Services, which include Automatic Speech Recognition, Text-to-Speech and prompt manager.