(Almere, The Netherlands – March 10, 2003)—Active Voice BV, a leading European provider of unified messaging, computer telephony and voice messaging solutions, today announced that it will demonstrate its new “Seven” speech recognition system with Royal Philips Electronics (AEX: PHI, NYSE: PHG), through its Philips Business Communications (PBC) unit, at CeBIT in Hanover, Germany, March 12 – 19, 2003. CeBIT is a world-leading trade show for information technology, telecommunications and networking, and information software and services.
Active Voice’s “Seven” speech recognition solution is a Microsoft? Windows? 2000-based application that functions as a virtual telephone operator, providing subscribers anytime, anywhere access to company directory information. When using “Seven,” subscribers are asked to speak the name of a colleague or department they wish to talk to. “Seven” retrieves the name from a database, then connects subscribers to the appropriate telephone extension. “Seven” uses Nuance?’s leading-edge speech recognition software from Nuance? and ScanSoft?’s the high-quality ScanSoft? RealSpeak? tText-to-sSpeech engine for accurate name retrieval and confirmation.
“We are very pleased to introduce “Seven” together with Philips Business Communications,” said Jeroen Franken, Director of Sales and Marketing, Active Voice BV. “By working with Philips, we are emphasizing our mutual partner focus to provide a new time-saving product to Philips and Active Voice customers around the world.”
“Seven” provides workers a convenient and efficient way to reach their colleagues.,” said Jeroen Franken, Director of Sales and Marketing, Active Voice BV. “It replaces the need for costly directory services because it gives every employee easy access to all internal telephone extensions, as well as frequently dialed external numbers. Workers no longer have to browse the Internet, look up numbers in a directory, or check their email contact list – they can simply dial “Seven” for the information.” “Users can also access the system from their home office or via their cellular phones;; “Seven” can be reached from virtually any phone across the globein the world,” added Franken..
We are very pleased to introduce “Seven” together with Philips Business Communications. With Philips as our launching partner we emphasize our mutual partner focus while providing an excellent new product to the Philips customers around the world
“Reachability is one of the key elements in today’s telecommunicationswork environment,” said ” says Marc Bauchant, Vice President of Marketing, Philips Business Communications. “As more and more Eemployees are becoming more and more mobile, within a company. Wworking at home or on the road is no longer an exception. By introducing “Seven” to its existing broad range of directory services, Philips is adding a strong speech dimension that supports reachability in a convenient way.
Philips offers already a broad range of directory services products that support reachability to a large extent. With the introduction of “Seven”, a new strong speech enabled dimension is added. “Seven” fits in perfectly in with Philips’ directory services solutions, such as MyOffice@Net Directory Browser, and is fully- integrated so that, meaning that names and telephone numbers are automatically distributed to “Seven.” and tThe use of powerful usage of text-to-speech and speech-to-text technologies makes manual maintenance actions superfluousunnecessary.”“
The “Seven” application can be connected to virtually any telephone switch by using a simple telephone extension, making deployment easy and reliable. The names and telephone numbers of an organization’s employees are stored within a database, which. The database is automatically updated via a connection with the telephone switch or through an import tool. In both cases, additional directory information or alternative spellings can be added to the “Seven” database using a Windows-based graphical user interface (GUI).
“Seven” is available as a 2-8 port system and is localized in U.K. English, Dutch, German, Italian, French, and Spanish. “Seven” will be made generally available to customers to customers in March 2003.
About Royal Philips Electronics
Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands is one of the world's biggest electronics companies and Europe's largest, with sales of EUR 31.8 billion in 2002. It is a global leader in color television sets, lighting, electric shavers, medical diagnostic imaging and patient monitoring, and one-chip TV products. Its 170,000 employees in more than 60 countries are active in the areas of lighting, consumer electronics, domestic appliances, components, semiconductors, and medical systems. Philips is quoted on the NYSE (symbol: PHG), London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and other stock exchanges. News from Philips is located at www.philips.com/newscenter.
About Active Voice
Active Voice BV is a leading European provider of PC-based unified messaging systems and computer telephony integration (CTI) solutions. Our products help people communicate in the easiest, most efficient way possible. Active Voice's products are sold through a network of independent telecommunications manufacturers, dealers, computer resellers, and strategic partners. Sales and technical support are provided by the associate offices in the United States (world headquarters), the Netherlands, and Australia. For more information, visit our Web site at www.activevoice.nl or contact Active Voice's Sales Department at Tel: +31 (36) 546 1212.
For more information, photographs, and interviews please contact the following:
Public Relations of Philips Business Communications: Vera Vincken, +31 (0)35-6891014, vera.vincken@philips.com
Web site: www.sopho.philips.com
Public Relations of Active Voice BV: Yvonne Jansen, +31 (0)36-5461212, info@activevoice.nl
Web site: www.activevoice.nl
Brand and product names used herein are property of their respective owners.