Nuance and IBM to partner for speech solutions

Nuance Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) and IBM (NYSE: IBM), have announced that the companies have entered into a comprehensive Joint Initiative Agreement to further accelerate innovation and advanced speech recognition solutions for enterprises, consumers and partners worldwide. This new partnership builds upon the technology and IP collaboration between the companies announced earlier this year.

What does this mean?

The companies will forge a tight, complementary relationship between Nuance’s advanced speech technologies and related professional services, and IBM’s Global Business Services organization and Web application server capabilities for traditional and VoIP network infrastructures;

For each industry above, Nuance and IBM will collaborate to fulfill the customer requirements for advanced, automated customer self-service and agent optimization;

and,
In automotive and telecommunications, the companies 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.

What we think?

I might not like the way Nuance takes over companies –but I am the first to admit that it does have the best voice portfolio for mobile. IBM has the enterprise brands that mobile services need to leap forward so fingers crossed this partnership delivers.