IBM''s software group launched the Indian English version of its ViaVoice, a speech recognition software, for the original equipment manufacturer market. This software has been developed with the help of Speech and Software Technologies (India), a Tata company.

ViaVoice recognises speech commands and acts accordingly. It is not a separate stand-alone application, but is an add-on utility. For example, you could speak out commands like "start", "programs", and "microsoft word" into the microphone connected to the PC -- and the MS Word program will start.

This software can run on any machine with a sound card, microphone and speakers. Additionally it can read back typed / stored documents.

This package can recognise Indian accented speech and incorporate words and usage typical to the Indian context, like "lakhs" and "crores". It has been built on an Indian acoustic model. This model picked even words and phrases native to various regions of the country -- north, east, west and south, using 40,000 sentences spoken by geographically distributed native Indians. These words are those typically used every day  at home, the workplace or in public.

Mr Vishwesh Padmanabhan-Vice President-Software and solutions Developer Marketing, Tata IBM with Mr Prakash Shukla-Managing Director, Speech and Software Technologies

The software has a base vocabulary of 62,000 words, to which 62,000 more can be added. These words can be segregated as base vocabulary, personal vocabulary(customised) and active/topical words.

This product will be sold through PC manufacturers, peripherals distributors, large publishers and OEM distributors in India, as a bundled offer with their product. It is a part of IBM''s efforts to incorporate speech technologies into its enterprise products and services to reach out to a broader audience and broader level of applications.

Vishwesh Padmanabhan, vice president, Tata IBM software marketing and software developer marketing, said the launch of the Indian English version of ViaVoice is a part of IBM''s strategy to bring in products suitable to the Indian market. He adds that this product is an example of how IBM has successfully undertaken research projects and turned them into marketable products.

Prakash Shukla, president, speech and software technologies (India), says this product was developed with extensive effort to ensure maximum accuracy for Indian usage.

Besides its other pioneering and leadership efforts in infotech, IBM is one of the leaders in the desktop speech recognition software market. ViaVoice was voted the top selling speech software in the US by PC Data in 1998. In India, the National Informatics Centre has also acknowledged this effort by IBM in bringing out the Indian version of ViaVoice.