SpeechTEK 2009 - 2008 Speech Industry Awards

August 24-26, 2009 • Marriott Marquis • New York, NY

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2008 Speech Industry Awards

Speech Self-Service

The Speech Technology Magazine 2008 Market Leader award for Speech Self-Service Suite went to Voxeo. As the interactive voice response (IVR) systems market matures, vendors are continually trying to cram more capabilities into their packaged self-service suites, either through home-grown applications or partnerships with other vendors that can supplement their own offerings. The industry as a whole is also making a shift from legacy, proprietary systems to more open-source, VoiceXML-based applications. In fact, industry analyst firm Datamonitor predicts that 2008 will be the first year that VoiceXML-based IVR shipments will exceed more traditional applications.

Mobile Applications

The Speech Technology Magazine 2008 Market Leader Award for Mobile Applications went to Vlingo. This year, we sought to recognize voice-powered applications that are starting to gain a foothold in the mobile phone arena. It seemed like a straightforward enough goal, but given the number of different things one can do with voice on a phone, an attempt to compare them all would be futile. After declining to comment on specific applications, one analyst laughed and said, "Good luck with this!"

Professional Services

The Speech Technology Magazine 2008 Market Leader award for Professional Services went to Vicorp. The professional services landscape is swiftly changing. Only one top vendor from last year maintained its position this year, and its likely that the landscape will shift again next year, especially given the purchase of this years vendor contender, Intervoice, by Convergys was announced in July. So what did analysts look for this year in ranking professional service suites? "Its not just contact centers," says Datamonitors senior analyst, Daniel Hong. "Its understanding the entire data network structure."

Speech Engine

The Speech Technology Magazine 2008 Market Leader Award for Speech Engine went to Loquendo. Throughout 2007 and the first half of 2008, the number and size of speech recognition deployments continued to spike as companies have become more familiar with the technology and its capabilities. The number of devices with embedded speech recognition technology has also increased steadily. Merger and acquisition activity continued, but several new vendors have emerged and others have expanded their roster of speech offerings, adding a handful of new firms to those considered for this award.

Speech Analytics

The Speech Technology Magazine 2008 Market Leader Award for Speech Analytics went to Nexidia. The speech analytics market is on the upswing, having grown by 106 percent in 2007 alone, according to research by DMG Consulting, and "momentum in 2008 has remained strong, despite the economic slowdown," reports Donna Fluss, the consultancy’s president. Though vendors have been expanding their products into other verticals, "primary buyers of speech analytics are still contact centers," Fluss says. "Vendors are not yet penetrating sales and marketing organizations, which represent the greatest opportunities and potential for business benefits."

Speech Security

The Speech Technology Magazine 2008 Market Leader Award for Speech Security went to VoiceVault. Speech security was a challenging category to rank. For starters, companies like BBN Technologies, SRI, and IBM have voice biometrics solutions, but they’re not really tailored to commercial enterprises. The other problem is that roughly half of the vendors offer hosted solutions, which gives them an edge in ease of use and, by extension, customer satisfaction. Consumer-facing deployments of voice biometrics are still proving themselves, particularly in the United States. While American financial institutions are interested, it’s difficult to find one willing to be an early adapter. And while there have been successful implementations overseas, such as European banking giant ABN AMRO, what happens in Europe stays in Europe.