Speech Industry Finds Microsoft's Speech Server to be a Red Herring!

If you were at SpeechTEK last week, you probably had a tough time finding Microsoft's booth. Unlike last Spring when Microsoft made its Speech Server Splash at SpeechTEK 2004, this year, Microsoft was not to found at SpeechTek. If you've been watching the news since then, you probably realize that in terms of Microsoft Speech Server, there is either no news, or bad news such as this rather scathing article entitled "Bumpy start for Microsoft's Speech Server" that ran in Computer World.

On the other hand, the rest of the speech industry continues to rapidly gravitate towards the established W3C standards (VoiceXML, etc.) for speech applications. One significant development this week was the huge boost in support enjoyed by the VoiceXML Forum. Intel, Loquendo, Scansoft, Tellme and Verizon have all joined the VoiceXML Forum at the sponsor level.