Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Cisco seeks more voice-recognition technology

Cisco Systems Inc wants to add more sophisticated voice-recognition technology to its products aimed at helping office workers communicate more flexibly, a senior executive said on Thursday.

Barry O'Sullivan, head of Cisco's Voice Technology Group, told Reuters he was not sure if the network equipment maker would develop such technology internally or through partnerships or acquisitions.

He said improved voice technology could be added to Cisco's "unified communications" products, which tie together e-mail, phones and other tools such as instant messaging and video conferencing.

"We'd like to be able to do things like search for stored conference calls, and intelligent tagging of voice," O'Sullivan said in a telephone interview.

An increasing number of companies are offering "unified communications" products. Cisco both competes and partners with companies like Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and IBM (IBM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) in this business.

O'Sullivan said the company would continue to work with others to ensure customers have access to various software and equipment, but relationships among the various players were likely to change over time.

"There's a $30 billion market opportunity out there. We're all circling around it with different strengths and we all want a piece of the pie," he said.

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