To lead SpeechWorks Japan, SpeechWorks has appointed Hiroshi Sakurai as managing director and under Mr. Sakurai’s leadership, SpeechWorks Japan will address the growing market demand for speech solutions in Japan.
There is a significant market for speech-enabled services in the Asia Pacific region and especially in Japan. The official opening of our Japan office symbolizes the strength of our commitment to work with local partners to deliver speech solutions to Japanese businesses, said Stuart R. Patterson, chief executive officer at SpeechWorks. We’ve established an effective partner network both locally and regionally, and with the leadership of Sakurai-san, SpeechWorks Japan will play a pivotal role in the Company’s near-term international growth.
Mr. Sakurai brings with him over 25 years of experience in the technology arena, most specifically in the domain of IVR and speech recognition systems. He has a superb track record including extensive relationships with key existing and potential SpeechWorks partners, such as InterVoice-Brite, AdamNet and others. Mr. Sakurai’s experience demonstrates his solid understanding of the Japanese market and its unique customer requirements. Mr. Sakurai is joined by a growing team of application engineering, project management and sales staff dedicated to providing local pre- and post-sales support.
To meet the burgeoning market opportunity in both Japan and other key markets, SpeechWorks has teamed with over 100 partners that offer the Company’s solutions worldwide. In Japan, SpeechWorks has strong partnerships with Avaya Japan, Compaq Japan, Edify, Intel, InterVoice-Brite, Nihon Tandem Systems (NTS) and NMS Communications. In addition, local partners working with SpeechWorks include Holoson Tech Corp., K.K. Denwa Housoukyoku, MIT Systems and YMA.
SpeechWorks Japan is dedicated to establishing close relationships with local prospects and partners, ensuring that their needs are met, and that the speech services they deploy deliver strong business results and caller satisfaction throughout Japan, said Mr. Sakurai.
SpeechWorks established a local presence in Japan to ensure that the unique needs of Japanese prospects and partners were met. SpeechWorks’ local presence, coupled with the Company’s network-based and embedded speech solutions, will provide Japanese businesses with speech-enabled services to meet the growing Japanese mobile workforce. (See related release today titled, SpeechWorks Japan Announces Suite of Speech Solutions for the Japanese Market.) According to a Yankee Group report, Japan is the worldwide leader in the deployment of mobile Internet services, with about 30 million Web-enabled mobile subscribers as of December 2000. The report also states that approximately 40 percent of the global wireless infrastructure opportunity from 2001 to 2005 will come from the Asia Pacific region, in particular from Japan and China.
