John McElhenny
Schwartz Communications
781.684.0770
digium@schwartz-pr.com
Jane Brooks
Digium, Inc.
256.428.6075
jbrooks@digium.com
Craig Campbell
Cepstral
sales@cepstral.com
Digium® Offers Cepstral "Allison Voice" Text-to-Speech Software for Asterisk Telephony Systems
Interactive Voice Response Application Integrates Custom Dynamic Messaging with Pre-recorded Prompts
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. And PITTSBURGH, Pa. — August 6, 2008 — Digium®, creators and primary corporate sponsors of the popular Asterisk® open source telephony platform, and Cepstral, a speech technology company, today announced that Digium now offers "Allison voice" text-to-speech software. The Asterisk-based interactive voice response (IVR) application, created by Cepstral through its longstanding partnership with Digium, allows customers to use the world's most widely recognized telephone system voice, that of Allison Smith, to customize messages and to mix dynamic information—that which cannot be pre-recorded—with recorded prompts in the same high-quality, user-friendly voice.
Asterisk is the world's leading open source telephony engine. Its flexibility empowers developers and solutions providers to create advanced voice over IP (VoIP) solutions. Open source Asterisk is available under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and downloaded by developers around the world 3,000 times a day. The professional-grade Asterisk Business Edition™ and AsteriskNOW™ make Asterisk easier to deploy, configure and maintain.
Allison is the voice users first hear when installing any Asterisk release. All include a set of pre-recorded Allison voice prompts and Digium offers a service to provide professionally recorded voice prompts. The service allows customers to tailor their Asterisk voice menus with uncommon names and unusual word combinations.
With the Cepstral text-to-speech application now available from Digium, developers can mix pre-recorded Allison IVR prompts with informational messages; custom prompts; emails; dynamic information, such as appointment or account data; or any other English language text or files. This allows the deployment of Asterisk applications that are of uniformly high quality and that do not require a mix of human-sounding and computer-generated prompts.
"Allison Smith's voice is familiar to millions of people—nearly anyone who's used voicemail or an IVR system knows her," said Bill Miller, vice president of product management at Digium. "Cepstral's technology is uniquely able to convey static and dynamic announcements using Allison's voice, giving customers greater flexibility in how they can use Asterisk systems. Now the software is available directly from Digium, with Digium guarantees and support."
Craig Campbell, CEO of Cepstral, said: "By partnering with Digium to create a synthetic version of Allison's voice, we've added the power of speech technology to further enhance the well-known Asterisk brand. The ability to use computer automation to "say anything" in Allison's voice provides a new tool for Asterisk developers and increases the capabilities and value proposition to customers."
Pricing and Availability
The Cepstral Allison Voice Starter Kit is available from Digium for $79.99 for one port. Existing Cepstral customers who want to replace or supplement an existing voice with Allison's voice may purchase the kit for $29.99. For additional details, visit Digium at www.digium.com/cepstral.
About Cepstral LLC
Cepstral is a speech technology company that provides speech technologies and services for the spoken delivery of information. The company builds high-quality, natural-sounding voices for hand-held, desktop and server applications. For more information, visit www.cepstral.com.
About Digium
Digium®, Inc., the Asterisk® Company, created, owns and is the innovative force behind Asterisk, the most widely used open source telephony software. Since its founding in 1999, Digium has become the open source alternative to proprietary communication providers, with offerings that cost as much as 80 percent less. Digium offers Asterisk software free to the open source community and offers Asterisk Business Edition and Switchvox IP PBX Software to power a broad family of products for small, medium and large businesses. The company's product line includes a wide range of hardware to enable resellers and customers to implement turnkey solutions or to design their own voice over IP (VoIP) systems. More information is available at www.digium.com.
The Digium logo, Digium, Asterisk, Asterisk Business Edition, AsteriskNOW, Asterisk Appliance, Switchvox and the Asterisk logo are trademarks of Digium, Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.
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