IBM's speech tech out in the open

NEW DELHI: To enable speedy development of its speech technology, IBM has recently handed it over to two open-source groups. Said an online report.

The code for its 'reusable dialog components (RDCs)' has been handed over to Apache Software Foundation (ASF) and the tools for speech editing to the Eclipse Foundation.

IBM's RDCs help in adding features like understanding of the basic words such as date, time and locations in telephony software.

According to Brian Garr, program director for the call center and voice portal segment of IBM's pervasive systems unit, these donations are valued at about $10 million. IBM's move to hand them over to open source is to boost their development and its low cost would attract more and more people to use them, added Garr. Since IBM's components are based on Java technology they can run on different operating systems, thereby getting an edge over other such software.

Some industry experts are of the opinion that by doing this IBM is probably trying to compete with Microsoft, which has built its own speech recognition software for Windows and .Net Platforms. MS introduced Speech Server 2004 early this year and its SDK for speech applications was downloaded by more than 100,000 developers, said the report.

Speech recognition applications will have major takers in the call center and automobile industry.