Speech in Office Communications Server - the word on the street
Now that the dust has settled on the announcement to integrate speech services into Office Communications Server, here are some choice words from the street:
- Avery Glasser, Opus Research: "This is an ecosystem changing event"
- Ian Rae, Silent Software: "Communication is becoming a key part of every organization. Communication across devices. Synchronous and ayschronous communication. Features such as: presence, IM, VoIP, video, Find-Me, Follow-Me, and ad-hoc conferencing. Think EMail++. For speech rec to be bundled into such a strategic product is a huge win."
- Terry Gold, Gold Systems: "...even [for] most of Microsoft’s competitors, this is going to be good for business because it is going to extend speech recognition throughout the enterprise. The world of communications in general is going to grow and change in fundamental ways, and a lot of people will benefit from Microsoft’s massive investment in this world. " (also check out Terry's post for a nerve-wracking, blow-by-blow insider view of the demo at SpeechTek, and Rob's too)
- Marshall Harrison, developer of MSS apps: "It will give us the ability to do IM, have presence awareness; speech enable audio and video conferencing and better voice and call management. I'm really stoked about the communications possibilities that this will open up."
And if I may put my marketing hat on for a moment (what? it's already on? oh. thanks) - I think there's a massive role for speech recognition services in today's communications landscape. We're only just beginning to get a sense of it. And by not only integrating automatic speech recognition capabilities into the core of the communications stack but also investing significantly in tools and APIs for developers to make the most of it - I think we've got a platform here that will see in a whole new wave of speech recognition apps.
More details of the MSS/OCS integration:
