Joe Orlando, worldwide marketing manager for IBM Corp’s Speech Systems business unit, is certain of two things. The first is that there will be an explosion in speech-enabled applications and devices in the coming years. The second is that IBM will be the company that reaps the most rewards from it. Orlando reckons the 25 years of research and development that Big Blue put into the area of speech recognition technology – before it went commercial a year ago with the launch of the ViaVoice product – gives it a clear edge over competitors such as Dragon Systems Inc and Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products NV. Although Dragon’s Naturally Speaking product has received more favorable reviews than ViaVoice, Orlando claims that his offering held a 66% market share in 1997 and boasts upwards of 2 million users. He brushes off any criticism by explaining that ViaVoice is over-engineered but superior and takes a fair amount of training (up to 45 minutes) to hit the 95% accuracy level that both IBM and Dragon claim for their first-generation continuous speech products. That’s just one highly visible piece of the pie, however. What’s more important, according to Orlando, is IBM’s ability to compete in all areas of the speech market, from desktop applications to call center packages to embedded automotive systems. He feels that when speech takes off, IBM will be well-positioned to take advantage of just about every opportunity that arises. IBM figures it needs partnerships to further the cause of speech, and that is what it’s devoted this year to – forging alliances with companies looking to speech enable whatever they make or do. Orlando says he gets three-to-four calls per week from customers asking whether various applications and functions can be enhanced through speech technology. Until now, all the interest in speech has come from the consumer space, and IBM will push hard to make it a reality in the corporate world. Within IBM, the area of speech technology is seen as strategic across all of the company’s product lines and Orlando more than hints that it’s an area of great interest to IBM chief Lou Gerstner. That support has kept the research and development money flowing into the speech group, which recently turned its first quarterly profit, although no numbers were disclosed. On the horizon for the group is the introduction of application development tools in mid-June, with a view toward eventually offering a full software development kit for speech enabling applications. It will also work on building up its vocabularies, which currently stand at about 250,000 for ViaVoice. Unisys Corp already has a lead in the development tools space, however, having launched it own suite of development tools, the Natural Language Speech Assistant, in October (CI No 3,262). That doesn’t dissuade Orlando, though. He believes that IBM’s technology in the area is second to none and boasts of 65 separate patents. For now he knows that his 380- strong group may seem insignificant in the larger context of the IBM behemoth, and he describes himself as a gnat…that wants to take over the world.
