Voxeo Talks

splunk>live Orlando!

Ananda Cheddie — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:09:59 +0000

2010 will be held this Wednesday March 10, 2010 at the Sheraton Safari Hotel and Suites in sunny Orlando, Florida (where Voxeo headquarters is also located). Splunk lets you search and analyze all your IT infrastructure data from one place in real time. With Splunk, you can troubleshoot application outages, investigate security incidents and more in minutes, not hours or days. Voxeo’s CTO, RJ Auburn will be doing a customer presentation at this event and you won’t want to miss it!

Case Study: In the cloud or on premise… how hybrid IVR helps Harris Computer Systems serve utilities large and small

Kim Martin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:06:52 +0000

A hybrid IVR platform is one that is available as a hosted/cloud-based solution and as an on-premise deployment. Just to be clear, we are not simply talking about two distinct offerings delivered by a single vendor. We mean one platform – offered two ways. Benefits include the ability to migrate between deployment models at any time or to take advantage of both deployment models at the same time — with no changes whatsoever to your applications. That’s exactly what our partner Tele-Works did to enable Harris Computer Systems to serve a diverse base of utility customers.

Harris Computer Systems provides Customer Information Systems, billing software and other solutions to thousands of utility customers throughout North America. Harris recognized that IVR is a key component to a successful utility’s customer service department, but required a way to serve all of their customers – from the largest to the smallest – with one consistent solution.

Tele-Works provided a Voxeo-powered solution that uniquely supports both hosted and on-premise deployments, as well as inbound and outbound calling, from a single code base. The Tele-Works solution extends across Harris’ complete utility product portfolio, giving thousands of utility customers access to quality IVR at price points that were previously unattainable. Read the case study here.

Video: Dan York at ITEXPO talking about cloud, security and what’s next

Dan York — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 13:30:53 +0000

At ITEXPO back in January, Eric Linask at TMC interviewed me in what has seemed to become a regular every-six-months routine. In the interview, I discussed:

the Cloud Communications Summit and pushing communications out into “the cloud”
security issues related to cloud communications
what’s next in communications, including multi-channel communications (a part of which we refer to as Unified Self-Service)

The big black vehicle behind me was being raffled off as part of the event promotion… hence why we were there. (Wouldn’t it perhaps have been more interesting if we did the interview inside the vehicle?) Anyway… here’s the video: (and will astute observers notice anything about me that is different from the other videos I’ve done?)

Voxeo CEO Jonathan Taylor in SF / Silicon Valley this week… open for interviews…

Dan York — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:48:31 +0000

Voxeo CEO Jonathan Taylor is out in the San Francisco / Silicon Valley area this week (March 1-4) and he’s opened up part of his time to speak with media, bloggers, etc., about what Voxeo is doing and some big news announcements we have coming up shortly.

His schedule is filling up, but if you are in the Silicon Valley area and would like to meet with him this week, please contact Megan Maxwell to line up a time. Thanks!

See Voxeo in the Google I/O Sandbox

Adam Kalsey — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:30:37 +0000

Google I/O is the tech giant’s annual developer conference May 19 and 20. The event includes sessions on how to build applications with Google technologies ranging from Android to App Engine and the Developer Sandbox, a demo pit of companies showing off what they’ve built with Google.

Voxeo will be in the Sandbox, demonstrating our real-time communications platforms with everything from production applications on Google platforms to experimental apps from our toy box.

Voxeo’s collaboration and communication platforms can be tightly integrated with Google technologies. Build and deploy rich multi-modal communications applications on Google App Engine. Organize a conference call within Google Wave, then call in with your phone or participate directly from your browser. Embed collaboration and web meeting spaces into any Google Friend Connect site. Or use Google Talk to interact with your users through any application.

If you’re heading to Google I/O, come by and see us. Or contact Ananda Cheddie if you’re in the area and would like to arrange a private meeting with us.

Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer visits Voxeo HQ

Dan York — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 20:10:08 +0000

We were very pleased this morning to have a visit by Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer to Voxeo’s corporate headquarters in downtown Orlando. Just yesterday in his “State of the City” address (which you can watch on video at that link), Mayor Dyer mentioned Voxeo as one of the “job creators of tomorrow” and an example of the high tech companies based in Orlando.

Here are two pictures of the visit with Mayor Buddy Dyer on the left and Voxeo CEO Jonathan Taylor on the right:

A Quick Look at Voxeo’s 8 Acquisitions…

Dan York — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 17:11:30 +0000

With the recent announcement of our acquisition of ClackPoint, we had a number of folks ask what were the “eight acquisitions” we mentioned in the news release. So to answer that question, here is a quick list (click the titles to view the news releases):

ClackPoint, January 2010

ClackPoint is the leading real-time multi-media collaboration platform. Over 100,000 people each month use ClackPoint’s online voice, video and text virtual conference rooms to connect and collaborate with colleagues, friends, and social networks. Attendees can access ClackPoint’s virtual conference rooms using any telephone, SIP VoIP device and service, Skype phone and IM clients, and ClackPoint’s own Flash-based phone and IM web client. Additionally, ClackPoint’s easy API enables developers and enterprises to add these capabilities to new and existing applications. ClackPoint also provides pre-built “widgets” that work with existing applications and platforms including Google Wave. You can read more about ClackPoint and try it out for free at www.voxeo.com/clackpointfaq.

Motorola VoiceXML Browser, October 2009

We acquired Motorola’s VoiceXML browser business, including full and exclusive rights to Motorola’s VoxGateway VoiceXML browser. Additionally, all existing OEM customers of Motorola’s VoiceXML browser are now Voxeo customers. We created a FAQ about the acquisition to help explain what this means.

Adhearsion, July 2009

We acquired the team behind the Adhearsion project and with that created the Silicon Valley-based Voxeo Labs R&D and developer-focused team. Adhearsion is an open-source communications framework that is powered by Ruby and running on top of Asterisk open-source PBX. It is used by over 5,000 developers today.

IMified, May 2009

We acquired IMified, the world’s largest hosted instant messaging application development and deployment platform. IMified enables IM bots that work with AOL, Cisco/Jabber, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo and post-acquisition added support for Twitter and Facebook. With IMified we delivered more of what we call Unified Self-Service where you can create one application in our hosted environment and have it interact with people across multiple channels including voice, SMS, IM and social channels. You can try out IMified for free at www.imified.com.

VoiceObjects, December 2008

With VoiceObjects, we acquired the leading self-service application development and analytics solution and established our Voxeo Germany office in Cologne with 30+ employees. VoiceObjects is a service creation environment based on the Eclipse integrated development environment that allows you to rapidly design and deploy applications that work with Voxeo’s Prophecy platform as well as about 30 other IVR platforms. As part of the acquisition, we acquired hundreds of customers including Adobe, Citibank, Hershey, IKEA, Kellogg, Postbank, SAP, Swisscom, T-Mobile, Vodafon and Volkswagen. You can try out VoiceObjects for free at developers.voiceobjects.com.

Micromethod, August 2008

With Micromethod we gained a SIP-based communication and collaboration solution and also established our office in Beijing, China. Products include the SIPMethod development platform based on JSR-289 SIP Servlets and other standards; the SIPoint product that includes a SIP registrar, location, redirect, proxy, instant messaging, XCAP and presence services; and the Horizon session border controller (SBC) and SIP firewall. Customers include a number of large video and wireless vendors. You can try Micromethod products for free at www.micromethod.com/free.

VoiceReady, July 2006

With VoiceReady, we acquired a web-based graphical design and reporting solutions for the rapid delivery and management of VoiceXML and VoIP-based telephony applications. We relaunched the solution as Voxeo Designer, the do-it-yourself voice application creation tool that is available in both our Prophecy Hosting or on-premise Prophecy software.

Vocomo, October 2005

Vocomo was a provider of an open-standards based IVR platform. With the acquisition Voxeo acquired over 100 enterprise customers.

Voxeo and Telenet Partner to Deliver Contact Center Solutions

Sabine Winterkamp — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:51:44 +0000

Telenet Contact Center Solutions are immediatly available as on-premise or hosted SaaS using Voxeo Prophecy and VoiceObjects platform.

Telenet will deliver its solutions on Voxeo´s Prophecy and VoiceObjects Unified Self-Service platforms using Voxeo on-demand hosting, on-premise software or in hybrid combinations of both. These options allow Telenet customers for both unexpectedly high call volumes and for disaster recovery.

Read the full story

Guest Post: PerSay on Voice Biometrics

Guest Author — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 12:15:34 +0000

This guest post is by Ariel Freidenberg, Executive VP of Sales and Business Development for PerSayand is part of our voice biometrics announcement today. Visit the announcement page to see a video interview with Ariel Freidenberg.

PerSay is the leading voice biometrics vendor today. We started developing our technology already 14 years ago when we were still part of Verint Systems, one of the leading vendors of lawful interception systems and recording systems for contact centers. Initially, the technology was developed for the intelligence and security arena only. In the year of 2000 we spun off from Verint Systems and established PerSay. The goal and vision was to take the technology and develop products for remote authentication. While they were initially designed for contact centers, they are deployed today across diversified communication channels and authenticate customers and employees using web, mobile, and voice applications. The problem we are trying to solve is how to efficiently enhance security in the interactions with clients while enhancing customer experience.

PerSay is one of the single companies that is exclusively focused on voice biometrics. We don’t do ASR nor TTS or IVR. Our field experience and track record in successfully implementing this technology is unparalleled. We invest significant resources in research of advanced voice biometrics engines, as well in the development of our platform, products, and tools which address all the deployment phases. This results in being the #1 player in this market, with the largest and fastest growing text dependent deployment worldwide at Bell Canada, with the largest text independent deployment at Bank Leumi, and the first ever real time fraudster detection system. Our technological superiority is validated as we constantly excel in the NIST competitive evaluations as well as many other third party comparative accuracy benchmarks. Our products are the most accurate, most secure and most advanced in the market. Our technology is language and accent independent and do not rely on ASR. Amongst the features we developed are:

Text-dependent engine
Text-independent engine
Text-promoted engine
ASR independent products.
A patented Liveness detection capability
Highest security standard of the PerSay platform
Multi tenancy for hosted environments
High availability configuration for mass deployments
Multi-concurrent configurations for hosted environments
Enrolment consistency checks to reduce FTE (Failure to enroll rate) to Zero!
Identification of an individual in a group.
Real time fraudster detection….and many more…

While voice biometrics has been around for a while, there are some challenges that voice biometrics must overcome:

One of the challenges is the enrollment of clients. The perception is that it is a complex process. As a matter of fact, we have been able to make this process as short and convenient as one can imagine.
Another challenge is the perception that clients may not opt into the service. In the last few years, identity theft and the need for better ways to secure data and the way we interact with our service providers led to a wide acceptance of voice biometrics by clients, which is translated into a massive number of enrolments on some of our systems.
One last challenge is the system setup and tuning process and the fact that every customers would like to test the system prior to deployment. In order to overcome this hurdle, we recently introduced PerSay Evaluation Studio. A unique and easy to use evaluation environment that ensure optimized accuracy and fast and successful completion of trials and pilots.

There are a few misconceptions in the market about voice biometrics:

That it has to be tied to Speech Recognition and it acts like speech recognition. The fact is that there is a huge difference between the two, and SV can actually be deployed without any ASR capability. Furthermore, SV from PerSay is totally language independent.
The second misconception is that the accuracy rates of the technology are the same they were a few years ago where some large service providers piloted some immature technologies then. Reality is that there was a significant and continuous improvement of the technology amongst improvements are much higher accuracy rates, which is translated to extremely good results in recent comparative evaluations and to more and more service providers looking into voice biometrics.

Voice Biometrics is most successful right now in banks and telcos. Both have a relatively frequent contact with their clients. Whilst banks are mostly interested in additional security both in self service applications as well as with their agent-human interactions, Telco’s are mainly interested in reducing the AHT (Average Handling Time) of a call by automating the identification and verification portion of the call.

PerSay has some very large service providers who successfully deployed and rolled out our product to their customer base. A few examples are: Bell Canada, Vodafone Turkey and bank Hapoalim. Nevertheless, we believe that the way Bank Leumi viewed voice biometrics as a strategic asset which ties into their IVR, human-to-human interactions with their clients, and their usage of voice biometrics as a real time fraudster detection capability – really makes them deserve the title of the most advanced and interesting deployment.

Over the next few years, we will probably see a few trends:

Consolidation in the voice biometrics market given the increasing need for competency to cope with mass deployment challenges
Development of advanced technologies to cope with various challenges in rolling out large deployments
Hosted players stepping into the market more aggressively through M&A’s
Partnerships with risk management and risk assessment companies to provide a more comprehensive risk management solution
Taking voice biometrics into the personalization market, whether it’s a smart phone, a luxury car, or a smart home…

We recently selected Voxeo as our Partner as we think there is a perfect business fit between the companies. Besides the fact that we target the same customers and can generate leads and opportunities to each other, Voxeo’s mixed strategy of hosted and on-premise offering fit our product strategy. For customers who prefer hosting, our product provides for multi-tenancy and supports multiple concurrent configurations. For customers who would not eventually go for a hosting model due to security issues, we can offer our product to be deployed on-premise and connect it to a local Prophecy platform or Voxeo’s hosted voice services. Moreover, by integrating PerSay FreeSpeech to the Voxeo network we can together to provide a secure gateway to contact centers that uses text-independent technology to transparently authenticate customers as they interact with contact centers’ agents.

We value Voxeo as a leader in the IVR and Voice Services space, and, as the leader in the Voice Biometrics market, we believe this relationship is poised for a great success.

To learn more about PerSay, our website is: www.persay.com and we have offices in NY and Israel. We can be reached via email at info@persay.com as well as sales@persay.com. We can be reached by phone at the following numbers: from the US at: 1-866-239-8515, from the UK at: +800-092-2134 and from Israel at: +972.9.372.8600

Guest Post – CSIdentity Voice Verified: Why We’re Speaking Up!

Guest Author — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 12:10:34 +0000

This guest post is by Bill Morrow, Chaiman and CEO of CSIdentityand is part of our voice biometrics announcement today. Visit the announcement page to see a video interview with Bill Morrow.

With identity theft knocking on company doors world-wide, advancements in identity verification security and account protection have become crucial to large and small businesses alike. Companies who rely on single factor authentication in which passwords and security questions are used as their only measure of security, have become easy targets for hackers, spammers, and identity thieves to drain customers bank accounts, ruin their FICO credit scores, and devastate the business’s precious brand equity. Identity theft protection company CSIdentity has expanded its business-focused identity theft protection Security Suite with the addition of an easy-to-implement voice biometric authentication solution: CSIdentity VoiceVerified®. This innovative new product offers a real-time authentication process as unique as a fingerprint, to businesses and consumers creating a highly secure method to verify identities before discussing or disclosing confidential information.

Voice biometric verification commonly gets confused with voice recognition. They are similar technologies but built for two very different purposes. Voice verification technology is about who is talking, not what they are saying. Voice recognition technology is about what you say, not who said it. One of the biggest challenges for voice or other biometric companies is making the enrollment process natural and convenient to the user. CSIdentity offers a quick and convenient enrollment process that requires the user to repeat simple phrases and takes less than a minute to authenticate.

There are misconceptions that voice biometric authentication is complicated and expensive to deploy or that it is easily defeated. Actually, our voice biometric solution is a simple SaaS solution and one of the most cost effective biometric solutions on the market. CSIdentity’s VoiceVerified® solution also has liveness detection built in to our system which makes it impossible for someone to play a recording of a user and gain access. Voice biometric authentication helps companies deploy a multi-factor authentication solution; “something you know, something you are, and something you possess,” to keep business and customers secure under every transaction.

Voice biometric technology is rapidly moving to production use in every day consumer activities such as telephone banking, call center security, and to enforce student academic integrity. Governments have been using voice biometric technology for years to perform forensic as well as to provide secure physical access. Commercial voice biometric applications are being used to solve fraud and security problems they are currently facing. Experts predict the voice biometric market will grow from niche interests to a full multi-hundred million dollar industry over the next 3 – 5 years. One of our best deployments to date is for a company that has created an online driver education course. They use the VoiceVerified® VAS technology to enforce academic integrity of students enrolled in their on-line driver education courses in several states. We have enrolled over 60K voice prints and completed over 300K verifications since 2008 making it one the largest consumer voice biometric deployments in the U.S.

With the success of Voice Biometrics in the industry, CSIdentity has joined forces with Voxeo to develop a highly efficient IVR platform capable of unlimited voice prints protecting even the largest of companies. We choose Voxeo because they cater to development teams, offer fully certified compliant VoiceXML 2.x browsers, have the most VoiceXML and CCXML ports available in the U.S. and offer the lowest monthly minimum calling plans. The partnership creates a robust security Suite with several unique features:

CSIdentity’s VoiceVerified® is unique from other offerings because it provide a patented SaaS model that is remote controllable. Other offerings do not allow a customer to control the score threshold or number of retries on a transaction by transaction basis. Our platform allows companies to be able to tune the service to meet the varying needs of their customer base.
We’ve created a Patented Voice Authentication Suite and currently are the only company legally allowed to offer a hosted voice biometric that allows the customer to have remote control access.
The VoiceVerified® VAS technology also uses a two engine fusion scoring algorithm to increase our accuracy and reduce our enrollment time. Currently there are no other vendors who offer this in a SaaS model.
Finally CSIdentity is the only vendor who can offer both identity verification and authentication services along with voice biometrics. All companies must be sure they are creating a voice print for the correct user before enrolling them. Other vendors assume the company has already authenticated the user through some black box process. We are the only vendor who can offer both solutions in one convenient SaaS model.

Identity theft is now a global issue, with customer accounts, confidential records and transaction logs vulnerable by phone and web access. Personal information is being lost in record numbers, precious brand equity that takes decades to establish can be destroyed in a single moment. Almost every business, institution or government agency that works with employees, vendors or customers over the phone or computer can improve their data security and decrease fraud with CSIdentity VoiceVerified. We offer the ideal solution for securing online data, call center transactions or mobile commerce connections. Businesses cannot trust that the person on the phone or computer is who they say they are in today’s ID theft infested world. Companies of all sizes must take an extra step to verify and authenticate identities, and CSIdentity VoiceVerified offers a consumer-friendly solution to do just that.

CSIdentity is the technology leader in Identity Theft Protection, Voice Biometrics, ID Verification, and Data Breach Management. The Austin, Texas based company offers a comprehensive suite of business and personal security solutions targeting all aspects of identity theft.

For more information please visit our web site www.csidentity.com or call us at 1.877.274.7440.