Fujitsu to use L&H's speech technology

SINGAPORE - Lernout & Hauspie, a provider of speech and language technology, products and services, today announced that Fujitsu Limited, a telecom and Internet technology solutions provider in Japan, licensed L&H's telecom speech recognition technology ASR1500 and text-to-speech technology TTS3000, in Japanese, English, German and French, to speech enable its BroadChannel Connector line of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions.

The BroadChannel Connector is Fujitsu's IP-based CRM solution comprising software development tool kits for various IVR (Interactive Voice Response) systems and unified messaging services.

It combines Fujitsu's customer contact software, communications and media processing products from Dialogic Corporation, an Intel company, and PRIMERGY server of Fujitsu.

The BroadChannel Connector will be released progressively in Japan and overseas markets from September.

ASR1500 offers accurate recognition of the caller's speech over the phone line, and TTS3000 converts any text data into intelligible speech.

BroadChannel Connector uses L&H technology to speech-enable the solution and allow for automation of many of its key functions. Common queries spoken over the phone can be ‘understood’ and answers can be read out automatically, thus freeing operators for more complex requests and calls.

"Speech and language technology has begun to be recognized as a mainstream interface for many computing solutions due to the speeding up of hardware and sophisticated software technology," said Noboru Adachi, president of L&H Japan.

John Duerden, president and CEO of L&H, said that L&H's goal is to grow its business in the rest of Asia.

"In Japan, the combination of Fujitsu's global business infrastructure and L&H’s multi-lingual speech and language and technology allows us to build on each other's strengths," Duerden added.