[November 12, 2003] Nuance Expands Vocalizer 3.0 Text-to-Speech Offering Nuance Expands Vocalizer 3.0 Text-to-Speech Offering with the Introduction of Canadian French Voice and Other Product Enhancements More Than 200 Companies Now Using Nuance Vocalizer MENLO PARK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 12, 2003-- Nuance (Nasdaq:NUAN), the speech experts, today introduced a new Canadian French text-to-speech (TTS) voice, updated North American English voices, and a number of other enhancements to its Nuance Vocalizer 3.0 text-to-speech software including: improved name pronunciation, reduced memory utilization, expanded handling of terms from key vertical markets, and broader operating system support. More than 200 marquis customers in the financial services, telecommunications, travel and utilities industries are "speaking" the praises of Vocalizer TTS software from Nuance. Nuance Vocalizer converts text in a database -- such as an airline's flight schedule information -- into spoken words, allowing companies to automate the delivery of dynamic information over the phone. Moreover, Vocalizer can reduce the costs associated with recording the prompts needed for automated speech applications. Professional prompt recording can cost more than $800 per hour, with an application taking weeks to record and edit in a professional studio. Therefore, a reduction in the number of recorded prompts can have a significant impact on application cost and deployment time. More than 200 companies use Nuance Vocalizer text-to-speech software across a range of languages, applications and industries. These companies include, among others, Countrywide Financial and Washington State Department of Transportation. Partners reaping the benefits of Vocalizer include Edify, Intervoice, Gold Systems, Workforce Technologies, Amcom Software and ISx. "With over 200 companies using Nuance Vocalizer and leading partners offering it as part of their platforms and solutions, Nuance Vocalizer has established itself as a market-leading text-to-speech offering," said John Shea, vice president, Product Marketing and Management, Nuance. "The addition of the Canadian French voice and other enhancements to Vocalizer 3.0 should further broaden its appeal and penetration in the market." New Enhancements to Nuance Vocalizer 3.0 Now, the human-like sound of Vocalizer TTS is also available in Canadian French. To ensure accurate and natural pronunciation, this new offering includes recordings of Canadian public places (government locations, libraries), financial, currency and stock information, as well as airline industry terminology specific to Canada (airline names, cities and flight numbers). It also includes recordings and special handling for English names, to ensure good performance for the bilingual Canadian environment. In addition to the new Canadian French voice, companies around the globe can now benefit from the following voice pack, dictionary and other enhancements to Nuance Vocalizer 3.0: Updated North American voices: Both the male and female Nuance Vocalizer 3.0 North American TTS voices have been updated for more natural output and to include all of the latest TTS enhancements from Nuance. Improved names pronunciation -- Enhancements to Nuance Vocalizer 3.0 reduce pronunciation errors associated with infrequently used person names by 25%. The enhanced version builds upon the proven name pronunciation database that was originally introduced in Vocalizer 3.0. Nuance Vocalizer 3.0's extensive dictionary includes more than 97% of people names based on U.S. census data. It also handles business names, street names, and addresses naturally. Reduced memory utilization: Recent optimizations have reduced memory requirements by 25%, enabling more cost-effective TTS deployments. Expanded coverage of industry-specific terms and prompts: A key advantage of Vocalizer 3.0 has been its "out-of-the-box" coverage of key prompts and industry-specific terms, acronyms and abbreviations for applications used in the financial services, travel, telecommunications and transportation industries. The recent enhancements to Vocalizer 3.0 enable companies to deploy even more effective applications through increased coverage of industry-specific words and phrases. Broader operating system support: In addition to the Windows and SPARC Solaris operating systems, Nuance Vocalizer 3.0 now also supports AIX to enable companies with IBM DirectTalk platforms to take advantage of its advanced TTS features. Other long-standing advantages of Nuance's TTS offering include: Nuance Speak As One(TM): Nuance's Speak As One offering is a set of technologies and services that enables the same voice to be used for TTS and those prompts that must be recorded. The offering also allows for the tuning of transitions between the two. This results in a single, high-quality voice and "personality" throughout the system and a seamless, more conversational and satisfying caller experience. Rapid creation of custom voices: Many companies use a specific voice talent or celebrity as their spokesperson and want to use that same voice in their speech applications. Within months, such special voices can be added to Nuance Vocalizer 3.0 to create a caller experience that leverages this unique personality. Support for open standards: Nuance Vocalizer supports industry standards such as the Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML), Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) and the Media Resource Control Protocol (MRCP). Intelligent email pre-processing: Vocalizer 3.0 leverages an email pre-processor that filters out unneeded header and routing information from emails for efficient email reading and unified messaging applications. In addition, Nuance Vocalizer properly pronounces and communicates sender, subject, date and other relevant information. Support for Nuance's patented and proven distributed architecture: Nuance's patented distributed architecture enables a speech system to load balance between servers to best use all available hardware resources, thus reducing hardware costs. Load balancing also minimizes downtime because when one hardware server in the network fails, the load will automatically shift to other servers that are online. Nuance's patented distributed architecture has been deployed at hundreds of customer sites over the past seven years. Global Language Support Nuance now offers a total of 18 TTS languages including: Vocalizer 3.0 North American, UK and Australian English, Canadian French, and-via Nuance partners-Brazilian Portuguese, European French, European Spanish, Dutch, Danish, German, Italian, Latin American Spanish, Korean, Japanese, Cantonese Chinese, Mandarin Chinese, Norwegian and Swedish. Pricing and Availability The Canadian French version of Nuance Vocalizer 3.0 is generally available now, and the other Vocalizer 3.0 enhancements will be generally available by the end of November. Pricing is available upon request. About Nuance Nuance (Nasdaq:NUAN) is the speech expert. Nuance's speech software solutions enable automated access to everything from account balances to flight information, email reading to voice activated dialing -- accessed using nothing more than the power of voice and an ordinary phone. In markets around the world, leading enterprises and telecommunications carriers -- including British Airways, Nomura Securities, OnStar, Sprint PCS, United Parcel Service, Vodafone, and many more -- work with Nuance to reduce costs, increase customer satisfaction and retention, create new sources of revenue and improve security. Nuance is headquartered in Menlo Park, Calif. and has offices around the world. For more information, visit http://www.nuance.com or call 1-888-NUANCE-8. This press release contains forward-looking statements, including, for example, those relating to of the anticipated benefits of Nuance products and the anticipated market adoption of Nuance products. There is no assurance that the results contemplated by any forward-looking statements will be realized. The following factors, risks and uncertainties, among others, could cause actual results to differ materially from those described or implied in this press release's forward-looking statements: the risk that Nuance products will not achieve anticipated benefits in some or all circumstances, the risk that Nuance products will not achieve anticipated market adoption, and other factors described in Nuance's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to Nuance's last-filed report form 10-Q. Nuance does not undertake to update any oral or written forward-looking statements that may be made by or on behalf of Nuance. Nuance is a trademark of Nuance Communications, Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]