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Nuance, Repatriation, and iPaaS
This week we take a look at speech to text, edge core cloud directions, and open source iPaaS.
The format this week is slightly different because I managed to injure myself in such a way that typing is not joyful. Much of what you’re reading here is speech to text — courtesy of Apple.
In the year 2023, the wonders of Apple silicon and macOS allow almost anyone to leverage accessibility features for speech to text.
Apple refers to this accessibility feature as Dictate or Dictation.
Source: Dictate messages and documents on Mac
In somewhat related news history, just over a decade ago, Apple Siri voice recognition technology was partly confirmed to be underpinned by Nuance in some fashion.
So, let’s take a look at speech to text origins.
Enter the DRAGON
Dr James Baker published a paper in 1975 entitled “The DRAGON system – An overview”. What followed was (is?) quite the journey in terms of technology, commercialization, mergers, and acquisitions.
Source: The DRAGON system (1975)
Dragon Systems
Over the next two decades, Dragon Systems commercialized what became part of a growing market for consumer grade speech recognition.
Dragon Systems business grade software prices back then were ~$700 USD ($1500 USD today) but consumer grade versions reached just under $300 USD ($600 USD today) when bundled with other software subsidies and partnerships.
Source: DRAGON NATURALLY SPEAKING 3 PREFERRED + NATURALLYMOBILE PC CD VOICE
Source:Speech recognition gets cheaper
Meanwhile, around this same time, Voice Extensible Markup Language (VXML) Forum and the VoiceXML standard would emerge.
Subtle Nuance
By 2000, Dragon Systems had been acquired by ScanSoft (formerly Visioneer). ScanSoft combined with Nuance in 2005 to become Nuance.
NaturallySpeaking was rapidly expanding beyond prosumer markets to be general consumer software on CDROMs — often paired with a microphone headset.
By 2005, Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking shipped versions retailing for ~$200 USD ($300 USD today).
From 2009 to 2021, Nuance would go on to acquire (and eventually divest) many other companies too.
Along comes Microsoft
By early 2022, Microsoft completed the acquisition of Nuance.
Source: Microsoft completes acquisition of Nuance, ushering in new era of outcomes
Last month, multiple updates to Nuance and Microsoft Azure features were published:
- Integrate and enable Nuance IVR in Customer Service as a third-party integration
- Introduction to integration of Nuance Gatekeeper (preview)
- Integration of Nuance Cloud IVR bot with Customer Service
Edge to Core to Cloud in 2023
Next, let’s pivot over to placement of workloads that will increasingly integrate other solutions like voice applications.
In terms of workload placement in non-hyperscale cloud service providers, there are growing numbers of options closer to a data center or data closet near you too.
- How Dell Claims Apex Smooths out 'Ground to Cloud with Azure HCI
- HPE GreenLake for VMware Cloud Foundation delivers cloud’s operational efficiency on-premises
- Migrating Workloads from Cisco HyperFlex to Cisco Compute Hyperconverged Solution with Nutanix White Paper
- Google Anthos Ready platform partners
- AWS EKS Anywhere
Fun Project of the Weekend
Finally, if integrated sounds good, then integration platform as a service (iPaaS) may sound even better. This weekend I decided to connect Slack to Mastodon using Activepieces which is an open source iPaaS project aiming to provide features and functionality similar to Zapier, Tray, MuleSoft, and Boomi.
Fun!
So, what will be the next big thing in speech to text, edge core cloud directions, and open source iPaaS?
Until then… Place your bets!
Personal Plugs
🤔 If you were wondering how to spend 30 minutes ⏳ of your day next week on Tue, Oct 24, 2023 at 12:30 PM EDT — good news! 🎉 I will be joining Randy Arseneau to discuss “The X(II) Factor: Modernizing Your Apps and Your Infrastructure” — 🤓👉 Register here! 👈🤓
Disclosure
I am linking to my disclosure.
