Aspect Software and Microsoft Form Alliance to Offer Cost-Effective Speech Solution

Aspect Software Inc., the world's largest company focused solely on the contact centre, today announced an alliance to deliver a solution targeted at small and midsize contact centres.

The initiative will provide Microsoft(r) Office Communications Server
2007 Speech Server as an embedded component of the Aspect(r) Unified IP(tm) product. This offering is designed to allow organisations to enjoy the benefits of high-end speech self-service features at a positive price point, and to leverage the reduced complexity of the unified solution while having greater control and increased contact centre functionality.

"Small and midsize contact centres face unique challenges, and they need applications that will specifically address their distinct requirements," said Mike Sheridan, senior vice president of strategy at Aspect Software. "Most importantly, they don't want to sacrifice functionality; they want the full array of capabilities, just as large contact centres do. Working with Microsoft is allowing us to bring a solution to market that incorporates a full set of high-end features that supports these organisations' customer contact strategies, including a fully featured speech capability."

Aspect Unified IP incorporates an automatic call distributor, a voice portal, quality management, a predictive dialler and Internet connection in a single application. It also provides unified reporting, routing and administration functionality, and hosted capabilities with multi-tenancy, while running on the customer's transport of choice:
either voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) or time-division multiplexing (TDM).

Speech Server (2007) is Microsoft's Voice Extensible Markup Language
(VoiceXML) 2.0-certified speech and telephony platform and provides the tools, run-time environment, and state-of-the-art speech and telephony services needed for speech-enabled telephony applications on a single, integrated platform. Speech Server (2007) helps reduce the complexity and cost of building, deploying and maintaining speech-enabled applications for customer self-service applications, as well as outbound notification services.

The combined offering of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, Speech Server and Aspect Unified IP 6.5, scheduled for release in July 2007, will help allow companies in the small and midsize contact centre market to easily automate customer self-service calls, reduce time call-centre agents spend on calls, improve customer interactions and add speech capabilities to line-of-business applications.

The offering from Aspect Software and Microsoft is designed to address the needs of this market by doing the following:

• Embedding speech as a core capability of Aspect Unified IP
• Reducing the complexity and time frame of implementation
• Providing a state-of-the-art platform at very attractive price points, enabling contact centres to leverage the benefits of speech recognition at a very low cost compared with alternatives

In addition, because the capabilities are based on standards such as VoiceXML, the components of the speech applications can be re-used, making them easily adaptable for new functionality.

Microsoft is the platinum sponsor at the Aspect Customer Experience user conference this week in Las Vegas, Nevada. During the conference, Microsoft representatives will host two sessions to educate Aspect Software customers on the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, Speech Server and Aspect Unified IP 6.5 solution.