Microsoft Buys Speech Support

Microsoft is improving its Speech Server platform with new technology from Unveil Technology, which will improve the ability of Microsoft’s users to optimize speech apps.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Existing Unveil customers will maintain their ties to its technology once the deal closes.

Unveil Technology is a Waltham, Mass.-based company whose lead
product, the Unveil Conversation Suite is billed as “a complete speech
application management environment that enables enterprise call centers to
rapidly build, deploy and maintain high performance speech applications.”

Microsoft plans on incorporating the Adaptive Learning and Conversation
Assist components from Unveil’s software into a future version of Microsoft
Speech Server.

Unveiled in March 2004, Speech Server is a Speech Application Language Tags (SALT)-based solution
and uses the .NET framework as its application server.

The goal is to take advantage of those components that are
used for “learn by example” tutorials and other “assist” functions in order
to more easily enable Microsoft’s users to optimize and develop their own
speech applications with Speech Server.

“Unveil’s technology is a natural fit with Speech Server because it is
in line with our vision of making speech applications affordable and easy to
develop and maintain,” said Rich Bray, general manager of the Speech Server
group at Microsoft, in a statement.

“By supplementing our toolset with
Conversation Suite technologies, even a non-technical call-center manager can
prototype and develop robust speech applications.”

A notable fact of Speech Server is that Kai-Fu Lee, then corporate vice president of the Speech Technologies Group at Microsoft, oversaw its production when it was in beta.

Kai-Fu Lee has been the subject of a bitter dispute between Microsoft and Lee’s current employer Google.