Ascent Enables Enterprise Efficiency with Voice Technology Software and Services
Expands business information technology solutions to include voice technology platform, applications and services
White Plains, NY (July 16, 2001) – Ascent Computing Group, an Inc.500 and Fast 500 company, today announced that the company will provide voice technology and application services to the financial/insurance, energy, healthcare, and manufacturing/retail industries. With this announcement, Ascent becomes the only provider of voice-based technology, application software and IT consulting services. The Ascent product, AscenTel™, uniquely voice-enables all business applications running under any operating system using Voice XML enhanced with proprietary Natural Language Processing. "The current growth potential within the voice software and services arena is significant, and will be captured first in key verticals that Ascent is already serving," said Mark Plakias, Senior Vice President and Analyst at the Kelsey Group. "Ascent is entering the voice market with its AscenTel™ product at a time when companies and industries are ready to take advantage of VoiceXML and speech recognition in partnership with companies they know and trust." With AscenTel™, users have the ability to request and receive information verbally from enterprise databases allowing transactions to be conducted over a reliable and secure infrastructure. The product ensures extremely high scalability giving enterprises greater control over customer service costs while providing a richer interaction experience for mobile employees and customers. “Because we have extensive experience providing business applications for many organizations in our target industries, we want to leverage our expertise to progress into the voice arena,” said Sunil Nikhar, Chairman and CEO of Ascent. “As we see the industry, voice is the simplest form of communication and we are extremely excited to bring this simplicity to various vertical industries allowing them to enhance employee productivity, customer service and overall efficiency and performance.” Applications not available until now are easily deployed using AscenTel™: With built-in text to speech conversion (TTS) and automatic speech recognition (ASR), AscenTel™ uses voice to successfully access and manipulate enterprise and Internet data over any wireless or landline phone. Ascent will offer AscenTel™ to selected industries in order to help organizations improve efficiency, reduce costs and enhance customer satisfaction. AscenTel™ will be offered to small and mid-sized businesses as a networked service and to larger companies as an in-house application. The platform software and applications will be available to end-user organizations through Ascent and its channel partners. Founded in 1994, Ascent will continue to offer IT consulting services to its many existing customers, including Duke Energy, Deutsche Bank, Cisco, Toyota, Canon and Avon, while beginning the beta testing of AscenTel™. About Ascent Computing Group (www.ascent-inc.com) Ascent Computing Group is the only provider of both voice-based business application software and consulting services. Voice is the simplest way to interact with enterprise data anytime, anyplace from any phone. Ascent uniquely voice-enables all business applications running under any operating system with Voice XML enhanced with natural language processing. Headquartered in White Plains, New York, Ascent has been developing and deploying business solutions for world-class companies since 1994.
