Intervoice Wraps Up Acquisition Of Edify
Intervoice, Inc. (news - alerts) recently announced that it has completed its acquisition of Edify, a global supplier of interactive voice response solutions, from S1 Corporation, Edify's parent company. Under terms of the definitive agreement announced November 18, 2005, Intervoice has paid S1 $33.5 million in cash to acquire Edify. The combined company will go to market using the Intervoice name. With combined industry experience, a large patent portfolio, combined product and services offerings, and a roster of partners and customers, the merged company is expected to advance Intervoice's market leadership position in the voice self-service market. The merged company combines Intervoice's strengths in development tools, standards-based applications and a global presence with Edify's Web-based tools, natural language applications and its North American market presence. Added revenues and resources from Edify are expected to help Intervoice speed the delivery of speech solutions across multichannel (i.e., voice, data and video) portals for both network and enterprise customers. Together, the two companies have deployed more than 1.5 million ports handling millions of mission-critical calls daily for more than 5,000 enterprises worldwide in vertical markets such as financial services, telecommunications and retail.
www.intervoice.com

Envox Announces New VP Of Professional Services
Envox Worldwide, (news - alerts) a global provider of voice solutions,'has announced that it has appointed Christoph Mosing as vice president of professional services. Based in the company's Westborough, Massachusetts headquarters, Mosing will manage all aspects of the company's global professional services business. With over 17 years of relevant experience and success in the field, Mosing will be focused on assisting companies move to open, standards-based voice solutions, particularly those that integrate advanced speech recognition, VoiceXML, Voice over IP (VoIP), Host Media Processing (HMP) and Web Services. Envox Worldwide is'a provider of development platforms and tools that are used to create a range of customer premise and hosted voice solutions that offer flexibility and broad support for new standards and emerging technologies. Mosing will be expanding Envox's Professional Services Group on a worldwide basis to ensure that enterprises, service providers and voice solutions developers have the assistance that they need in designing, creating, deploying and maintaining a wide range of open, standards-based voice solutions, including interactive voice response (IVR), enhanced self-service, automated directory assistance, alerts and notifications, call centers, and carrier service solutions among others.
www.envox.com

Definition Du Jour
Blind Source Separation (BSS)
An algorithm-based process used to separate different sound sources in a recording or a speech-recognition system. BSS becomes particularly important when speech recognition is being used when there is background noise surrounding the speaker. The 'blind' refers to the fact that when considering several sound sources, many details are unknown: how many sources there are, what their distance from the input or recording device is, and whether the sources' movements are constant. The process applied when one or more factors is known and constant is referred to as 'semi-blind source separation.'

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