Let the beauty pageant begin, Speech Heads!

Perhaps as a warming aperitif to our own 2009 Speech Industry Awards—-now accepting applications—-Voxeo has made Datamonitor’s 2009 “Decision Making Matrix” for the IVR space publicly available on their site.

Datamonitor recognized Voxeo and Genesys as the #1 slammin’ players in the IVR space this year. The two vendors “achieved the highest aggregated scores across technical capabilities, end-user sentiment and market impact rankings.”

Avaya, Cisco, Convergys / Intervoice and Nortel were also highlighted for their strong market presences, technical capabilities, but didn’t score as highly in end-user sentiment. Likewise, Aspect, Holly Connects and Syntellect were runner’ed-up as “viable contenders” with their own “unique strengths.”

The report has far more detailed explanations and considerations of where IVR has been historically and where it seems to be trending. Check out the full results HERE!

Also, if you feel yourself desperate for more speech awards and rankings, be sure to register for SpeechTek where the winners of the 2009 Speech Awards will be unveiled. I know that since we announced that we’d be taking entries, my brother Adam B. has been hyperventilating into a brown paper bag.

Greetings from the Orlando Airport! I’m wearing black clothing (anticipating cold NYC weather), but 99 percent of the people here are dressed like they just stepped out of Epcot. Also, lots of fanny packs. Anyhow, VoiceCon ended today. Though I wanted to live-blog every day, I was unable to do so for a few reasons: my MacBook was set on “better performance” and my battery kept dying; the conference’s free WiFi network always gave me only ONE BAR during sessions and keynotes; and I was busy every day from 730 am – 830 pm (usually, the people at VoiceCon looked at me like I was insane for staying that late, and kicked me out). So, yes — mini-traumas aside, I enjoyed the conference.

Usually, I’m holed up in the Speech Tech, sucked into the world of ASR, IVR, TTS, STT, ACD, and VUI. This time, I got to check out some UC solutions that will have a real impact on the contact center space. The biggest issues in UC/VoIP? Interoperability, integration, tons of “strategic partnerships.” I was reminded of Forrester analyst Brian Haven’s keynote speech at Nuance Conversations at several VoiceCon keynotes. The message from both speeches was the same: companies need to wise up to their changing consumer and employee demographics — and, with a plethora of information available at one’s fingertips, the enterprise must adapt and embrace the changing nature of business relations. This extends past presence and UC/UM sessions; it also penetrates the contact center and overall IT infrastructure. Head geeks, unite — VoiceCon was all about you. Read on for some of my favorite sessions’ highlights…

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