SpeechCycle and Loquendo Partnership Sets the Stage for Rapid Adoption of Rich Phone

SpeechCycle and Loquendo (News - Alert) today announced a strategic partnership to deliver the industry's first end-to-end offering for building and deploying Rich Phone Applications (RPAs), which deliver unparalleled customer experiences. Through this partnership - which combines the power of Loquendo's ASR and TTS engines and VoxNauta VoiceXML browser with SpeechCycle's (News - Alert) industry-leading RPA Express platform - enterprise developers and system integrators now have everything they need to deliver the next-generation of speech-enabled customer interaction management solutions to meet the needs of enterprise contact centers worldwide.

The barriers to entry for rapid development

"We are excited about this partnership because it allows us to continue to lower the barriers to entry for rapid development and deployment of voice and multi-modal self service solutions," says Zor Gorelov (News - Alert), CEO of SpeechCycle. "Speech recognition is a key capability for RPAs that combine touch, text and talk interfaces on the phone and smartphone. Loquendo is a recognized leader in speech ASR, TTS and VoiceXML platforms and we are impressed with the performance of its technology."

Loquendo ASR is next-generation speech recognition - multilingual and speaker-independent - it reliably recognizes large-scale vocabulary continuous speech, even in mixed and noisy environments, such as on mobile or VoIP devices. Loquendo TTS is highly fluent synthetic speech - currently available in 30 languages with more under development - it offers natural-sounding, expressive speech, in both male and female voices. VoxNauta, the Loquendo CCXML and VoiceXML platform, is among the few Voice Portal platforms on the market formally certified by the VoiceXML Forum as compliant with the VoiceXML 2.1 standard. These speech technologies power services handling millions of calls everyday worldwide.

Completely unified platform for the composition

RPA Express is a completely unified platform for the composition, enterprise integration and performance measurement of Rich Phone Applications. The platform includes RPA Transact, a highly scalable speech and multi-modal application server, RPA Orchestrate, a connectivity framework for dynamic mashup and integration of enterprise applications and RPA Compose, an easy-to-use WYSIWYG authoring environment. The platform also includes a set of pre-tested, customizable dialog components, called RPA Interaction Providers, to automate common business functions with built-in best practices for voice interaction design and RPA Dashboard, a Web-based reporting environment for detailed performance measurement that drives continuous application improvements.

"Self-service professionals need to balance the demand for speed-to-deploy against requirements for reliability and an outstanding customer experience," explained Dan Miller, senior analyst at Opus Research. "This partnership will have a broad impact on the industry because the nature and context of business-to-consumer dialogs vary so broadly, and enterprises will reap great benefit from a tight partnership between speech-processing and application processing resources."

SpeechCycle, the leading provider of Rich Phone Applications (RPAs), powers innovative customer interaction solutions for contact centers around the world. With hundreds of millions of user interactions processed, SpeechCycle is in the vanguard of a new generation of customer interaction management innovators, delivering unprecedented strategic customer value. SpeechCycle is a 2009 Deloitte (News - Alert) Fast 500 winner, and the 67th fastest-growing company in North America. For more information please visit www.speechcycle.com.

Loquendo TTS, Loquendo ASR, and Loquendo Speaker Identification and Verification empower people to interact with technology in the most natural way possible - using their voice - creating a next-generation client experience while saving businesses millions each year.

The Loquendo MRCP Server

Also integrable via the Loquendo MRCP Server and VoiceXML and CCXML platform, Loquendo speech technologies power millions of calls every day in the telecommunications and enterprise markets across the globe.