Nuance Communications and IBM today announced entering into a Joint Initiative Agreement towards speech recognition solution offerings for enterprises, consumers and partners across the globe. The two firms are already into a tie-up for technology and IP collaboration.

Nuance now becomes IBM’s Preferred Business Partner for speech technologies and related professional services. The tie-up aims to target Automotive, Banking, Electronics, Energy and Utilities, Healthcare and Life Sciences, Insurance, Media and Entertainment, Retail, Telecommunications, and Travel and Transportation industries.

The alliance aims to concentrate their efforts in three key areas. Firstly they will integrate Nuance’s speech technologies into IBM’s Global Business services organization and Web Server capabilities for traditional and VoIP network infrastructure.

Secondly for the mentioned ten industries, the two companies will collaborate to fulfill the customer requirements for advanced, automated customer self-service and agent optimization.

Thirdly for automotive and telecommunications industry, the company will collaborate to address the needs of in-vehicle and on-device OEMs that seek to incorporate next-generation technologies that focus on voice access to device control, search and media management.

“As businesses and governments aim to operate more intelligently and efficiently, the full impact of speech technology is just emerging.  Working with Nuance and its extensive array of complementary products and services, we are accelerating the opportunity to deliver exciting innovations to clients in key industries,” said Frank Kern, IBM senior vice president, Global Business Services.  “Teaming with Nuance means great things for organizations and manufacturers that rely on speech technology to advance their own business objectives and provide exciting new services for their customers.”  

“The potential innovations in speech technology that result from Nuance and IBM’s combined efforts, expertise and resources are boundless,” said Paul Ricci, chairman and CEO, Nuance.  “Together we can achieve new benchmarks in design, usability and technical excellence by collaborating with IBM’s renowned speech teams and by serving as IBM’s preferred partner for speech solutions.  And, this initiative enables us to deliver on our joint mission to proliferate the power of speech across a vast number of applications and services.