It shouldn't surprise anyone that purveyors of hosted speech recognition systems see a trend toward hosting, but they may actually be right. Hosted (as opposed to premise-based) speech services can be cheaper, quicker to deploy, and easier to manage, so many vendors of speech recognition enabled IVRs are offering their applications on hosted platforms.
Analysts predict big growth for hosted speech service in the next few years. Rex Stringham, head of the IVR consulting firm EIG, thinks the trend is spurred by worry about speech technology: "Speech recognition is significantly more expensive than touchtone. By shifting responsibility for optimizing speech recognition to the service provider, the initial investment and risk with speech recognition is minimized."
That means speech technology is growing faster, and it's more available to small businesses and those without cutting-edge IT departments. Many of the vendors we spoke to offer speech automation both as on-premise and hosted applications. TuVox is one of them.
About three quarters of TuVox's speech recognition applications are sold as a hosted service. "There are certain efficiencies you get from a hosted solution that are hard to get on-premise unless you achieve certain volume levels," says TuVox co-founder Steve Pollock. He does see a trend toward hosting, but before TuVox's purchase of NetByTel last September, premise-based applications were half their business.
Other companies, like Angel.com, are so confident in the future of hosted speech services that it's all they do. Angel.com CEO Mike Zirngibl sees hosting as a more efficient way of launching speech applications: you need fewer software packages from fewer vendors, they deploy quickly, and updates are handled automatically. Will premise-based systems go away? Zirngibl thinks it's a rare situation that wouldn't be better served by hosting, and that on-premise systems will be "significantly reduced," if they don't disappear altogether.
What may replace total on-premise systems are hybrids: part hosted, part owned automated speech systems. Different vendors have different ways of approaching hosting. TellMe uses a network. Calls come into the TellMe network, which grabs data from the client via on-premise VoiceXML - enabled servers. The network translates the premise-based data to speech for the caller.
Convergys is another provider that offers a sort of hybrid service. They host the telephony side, but the application is on the client's servers. Convergys general manager Bill Andrews says it's for their customers who "didn't really feel they had all the experience to do a prem-based application on their own, but still wanted to have some control over the application layers of it." Security, Andrews says, is the biggest reason to keep the application on-premise. This kind of combination of premise-based information and hosted service is becoming common.
