Nuance Fuels Speech Market with New Channel Offerings and Support.

Business Editors

MENLO PARK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 1, 2003

Industry Leading Partner Community Teams with Nuance to

Deliver High Quality Speech Solutions Worldwide

Industry analysts predict that the speech market will grow to $1.4 billion by 2004. To better serve this market, Nuance (NASDAQ:NUAN), the speech expert, today announced an expanded set of channel programs for its Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), Value Added Resellers (VARs), technology partners, and master distributors. By taking advantage of the new programs, Nuance partners will improve their ability to deliver speech solutions worldwide. Partner tools and training have been specifically designed by Nuance to help partners identify and implement speech solutions, leverage marketing and sales support, and increase the knowledge of speech within their organizations.

Enhanced Partner Program Offerings

Nuance's new partner offerings will facilitate the advancement of speech-related sales, marketing, and technical skills through industry leading training and tools. Key program elements include:

-- Nuance Partner Sales Training Program -Delivered both via

webcast and in person sessions, Nuance's new sales training

program, provides partner sales teams with successful speech

solutions sales techniques. The Nuance Advantage, Nuance

Product Overview, Selling Nuance Engines, System Provisioning

of Speech Solutions, and Engaging Nuance Professional

Services. A new course on Delivering a Successful Discovery

Session will be added to the curriculum this fall.

-- Nuance Market and Sell Extranet - Nuance's online resource for

selling and marketing tools is available to all partners.

Features include access to ROI tools, product presentations,

speech overview information, white papers, and product demos.

-- Certification - To meet the growing demand for professionals

who can develop and deploy successful speech solutions, the

Nuance Certified Consultant Program validates expertise in the

job roles necessary for a successful speech implementation. It

offers an impartial measure of a candidate's knowledge and

ultimately helps to ensure the overall success of a speech

solution implementation.

-- Solution Directory - More and more enterprises and

telecommunications carriers are interested in deploying

packaged speech applications. To better serve their needs,

Nuance's new Solution Directory provides customers with an

online listing of the various packaged and repeatable speech

applications available from Nuance's partners.

-- Nuance Speech University - Technical training through Nuance's

training department has long been dedicated to the success of

partners. With courses targeted to all job roles associated

with speech application development, including dialog design,

application tuning, VXML development, system administration,

and project management, Nuance is preparing partners for

success with speech.

"Our partner channel is a critical component of Nuance's go-to-market strategy," said Andy Barbour, senior director, Global Partnerships & Alliances, Nuance. "We are committed to providing our growing number of OEM, VAR, technology partners, and master distributors with the programs they need to deliver best-of-breed speech solutions to customers worldwide."

Nuance's longstanding OEM partners include Avaya, Edify, Ericsson, Gold Systems, Nortel Networks, and Syntellect, as well as new OEM partners Computer Talk Technology and TETCO Technologies. In the Unified Communications space, OEMs include companies such as 3Com, Active Voice LLC, Ascent Computing Group, Avaya, ESNA, Mitel Networks, Sound Advantage and UTStarcom. These partners leverage Nuance's award-winning speech recognition, voice authentication and text-to-speech engines to provide speech solutions on their own platforms to some of the world's largest and most influential companies.

Nuance Platform VAR partners include companies such as, Datria, Digital DataVoice, Fluency Voice Technology, HTI Voice Solutions, Phoenix CTI, TELUS, Versay, Viecore, WorkForce Technologies, and XTEND Communications Corp. These companies resell the Nuance Voice Platform (NVP), the industry's first software platform specifically designed for voice automation, and develop and deploy both custom and packaged speech applications. Nuance is also seeing a new group of partners emerge such as Apptera and Vialto, whose applications are available on NVP

Nuance also maintains strategic partnerships with leading technology companies such as Aculab, HP, IBM, NMS Communications, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Inc., and many others. These technology partners market and sell products, services, designs or standards that are primary components of a speech solution or are complimentary and add value to speech solutions. Together with Nuance, these partners are committed to developing open standards-based speech driven solutions for customers worldwide.

Nuance Adds Master Distributors to Partner Roster

Nuance's newly formed master distributor program enables companies to license and self-provision Nuance software to resell to other parties for incorporation into their integrated speech solutions. In North America, Syntellect, a provider of self-service speech enabled solutions, has been selected a Master Distributor for Nuance speech engines, and Versay, a provider of speech solutions and services that deliver a compelling caller experience, has been selected a Master Distributor for the Nuance Voice Platform. Nuance Master Distributors in Europe include POST cti in the UK and Scandinavian region, TELLING in France, Ydilo in Spain, Mundwerk in Germany, SpeechCraft in Sweden and Group 2000 in The Netherlands.

"Nuance is committed to enabling a broader distribution of voice-enabled self-service solutions to customers around the world," said Chuck Berger, president and CEO of Nuance. "By expanding our partner program to include master distributors, Nuance will enable an even greater number of companies to benefit from high-value speech solutions. In addition, we will help facilitate new partner opportunities in the cutting-edge speech marketplace."

To learn more about Nuance's Partner Program, visit http://www.nuance.com/partners/index.html.

About Nuance

Nuance is the speech expert. Nuance's speech software solutions enable automated access to everything from account balances to flight information, email reading to voice activated dialing -- accessed using nothing more than the power of voice and an ordinary phone. In markets around the world, leading enterprises and telecommunications carriers -- including British Airways, Nomura Securities, OnStar, Sprint PCS, United Parcel Service, Vodafone, and many more -- work with Nuance to reduce costs, increase customer satisfaction and retention, create new sources of revenue and improve security. Nuance is headquartered in Menlo Park, Calif. and has offices around the world. For more information, visit http://www.nuance.com or call 1-888-NUANCE-8.

NUANCE PARTNER QUOTE ADDENDUM

"For some time, Aculab and Nuance have been successfully supporting a variety of speech enabled applications. This partner program will help bring the power of speech technology to a greater number of solution providers and their target markets," Chris Gravett, sales and marketing director, Aculab.

"Apptera is pleased to be working with one of the industry leaders and primary proponents of VoiceXML solutions. The strength of Nuance's core technology, combined with Apptera's configurable packaged applications, positions us to jointly drive the expansion of voice-enabled solutions across the enterprise," said Steve Ehrlich, vice president of marketing for Apptera.

"Ascent Computing Group is very proud to be a Nuance OEM Partner. This program helps us all reach our mutual goal, which is continually opening new markets to speech recognition products and services," said Sunil Nikhar, CEO of Ascent Computing Group.

"Computer Talk Technology (CTT) is delighted to be an OEM partner to Nuance. CTT has a long successful history in the self service market, and embedding Nuance software into our popular ice platform gives us the ability to offer a range of world class speech applications in virtually any contact center and enterprise environment. Nuance is a valued partner of CTT and we look forward to a long lasting mutually beneficial relationship," said Greg Blackett, director of marketing at Computer Talk Technology

"The Datria-Nuance alliance has been a powerful one, allowing companies such as Bell Canada, Florida Power and Light, TELUS, and Mobile Gas to improve productivity while also reducing costs. They track orders, repairs, and installations more readily and thereby improve customer satisfaction. We look forward to working with Nuance to deliver speech solutions on the Nuance Voice Platform to our global customers," said James Greenwell, president and CEO, Datria.

"Our alliance with Nuance as a provider in speech technologies will help Ericsson provide the best products for our Enterprise customers as the speech market expands," said Glen Whittier, product manager enterprise applications, Ericsson Enterprise.

"In Nuance we have experienced an excellent level of support and partnership, with teams from Fluency and Nuance working side by side on some of our most complex applications to date. We value the relationship very highly," said Alex Green, CEO, Fluency Voice Technology.

"HTI Voice Solutions is pleased to offer our clients the Nuance Voice Platform. NVP gives our clients a powerful, yet cost-effective set of open standard, natural language technology tools used to provide the highest possible levels of service and support to their customers. Together with Nuance's outstanding speech recognition technology, NVP uses world-class development and management tools to provide an unparalleled package of functionality and usability," said Bernie Hannon, senior vice president, HTI Voice Solutions, Inc.

"As enterprises extend the way they communicate and transact with employees, customers and business partners, we're not just accessing technology via laptops and PCs anymore. Speech is now becoming an increasingly important interface in a world without keyboards. Standards such as VoiceXML are key in ensuring that disparate systems work together, and that developers can quickly bring open, standards-based solutions to market. IBM is pleased to be working with Nuance to further the growth of of VoiceXML-based offerings," said Gene Cox, director, product management, IBM Pervasive Computing Division.

"Through the partnership with Nuance we get access to the best technology in the market. The quality of the Nuance products helped us to win important customers among financial institutions in Germany," said Max Moldenhauer from MUNDWERK.

"Having been a major proponent of speech recognition technology and a trusted partner of Nuance since the late 90's, NMS Communications has and continues to provide leading media platforms and subsystems for next-generation speech-enabled solutions. NMS and Nuance embrace emerging standards to enable development of faster, more reliable speech applications," said Gerrold Walker, vice president, NMS Communications.

"Oracle today ships more Voice-enabled applications than any other enterprise software vendor, all capable of running through any VoiceXML gateway and of leveraging Nuance ASR and TTS components. Oracle is delighted to be working with Nuance as a technical partner to provide J2EE-based voice application development and deployment platforms based on Oracle infrastructure," said Jacob Christfort, vice president, Server Technologies and chief technology officer for Mobile Products and Services, Oracle Corporation.

"PhoenixCTI is extremely pleased to be associated with Nuance. The PhoenixCTI model is simple. We turn customers into heroes every day by completing projects on time, within budget and exceeding our customers expectations and we do it with best in class technologies. That's where Nuance comes in," said Frank Rudy, vice president, sales, PhoenixCTI.

"We've seen a massive increase in interest in speech technology from our channel partners. Not only is there much greater end user demand as organizations come to realize what cost and efficiency benefits can be achieved by speech-enabling applications, but resellers are also much more switched on to value-added opportunities in speech. For example, resellers with an understanding of open telephony can now easily add value to an existing IVR installation by bolting-on a speech-driven interface using Nuance's open API toolkit. It's a win-win situation," said Neil May of POST cti.

"Nuance not only provides us with our base speech technology but also supports us in our marketing efforts to the small and medium sized enterprise. The new additions to their partner marketing programs will be an important part of our marketing efforts as we move forward," said Hardy Myers, president of Sound Advantage.

"We are honored to be selected as Master Distributor for Scandinavia and see this as an acknowledgement of an excellent cooperative relationship established in the mid 90's. This role will help us improve our service to existing and potential customers wishing to create solutions with Nuance technology," said Rich Schulman, CEO of SpeechCraft.

"Mainstream adoption of speech-activated services is well underway and Sun and Nuance have witnessed it through tighter alignment resulting in several important customer wins. "With a well designed partnership and sales programs, we believe we have a successful vehicle for attracting the masses. This is the right step at the right time by Nuance," said Reza Nabavi, market development manager, mobile Internet at Sun Microsystems.

"We are excited about being selected a Nuance Master Distributor. We see it as a reflection of our level of commitment to and outstanding relationship with Nuance, as well as our demonstrated experience with Nuance products and solutions. We look forward to providing the first class technical, speech services, and mentoring support that will allow our reseller and integrator partners to bring the full power and benefits of Nuance speech recognition technology to their customers," said Steve Dodenhoff, president of Syntellect.

"TELUS is please to be representing the power of Nuance's best-of-breed Speech Recognition Technology in three different ways. First we utilize Nuance applications within our own enterprise for Contact Center and Field Services; second we develop and finally, we now offer Nuance's NVP for outright sale t those customers that wish to own their infrastructure. In each instance, we are finding Nuance to be a first rate partner," said Ken Redekop, director of contact centre solutions for TELUS. "

"Versay is excited to assume the role of Master Distributor for the Nuance Voice Platform. This further strengthens the already strong partnership between Versay and Nuance. Providing our partners and clients with a standards-based platform for VoiceXML applications underscores Versay's commitment to a standards-based approach to speech, because it affords invaluable advantages including flexibility, control, and investment protection to the enterprise," said Phil Gray, president, Versay Solutions.

"The use of Nuance's premier speech recognition products coupled with our own speech Service ExChange application suites enable us to deliver leading edge, cost effective solutions to our customers. The extensive array of Nuance development and support capabilities provide efficiencies for us and our customers that translate into quicker development cycles and high-end service availability," said Rick Thompson, president, WorkForce Technologies.

"The Nuance Voice Platform provides us with a head start toward developing market-specific applications for our customer's specific needs in voice navigation. Nuance Voice Platform's advanced tools enable our programmers to concentrate on our application, while Nuance takes care of and maintains the rest," said Robert M. Charland, senior vice president, marketing, XTEND Communications Corp.

This press release contains forward-looking statements, including, for example, those relating to the anticipated growth of the market for speech technologies, demand for speech based applications and speech professionals, the benefits of Nuance's partner programs and the impact of such programs on partners and the speech market generally, the future growth and capabilities of Nuance's partner network, the benefits attainable by using Nuance speech products and anticipated future customer adoption and deployments of Nuance speech products and speech generally. There is no assurance that the results contemplated by any forward-looking statements will be realized. The following factors, risks and uncertainties, among others, could cause actual results to differ materially from those described or implied in this press release's forward-looking statements: the risk that the speech market and demand for speech technologies may not grow as anticipated, the risk that new applications may not be deployed as anticipated, or may not achieve anticipated benefits, the risk that Nuance's partners may not derive anticipated benefits from Nuance's programs and/or may not perform as anticipated in some or all circumstances and other factors described in Nuance's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to Nuance's last-filed report form 10-Q. Nuance does not undertake to update any oral or written forward-looking statements that may be made by or on behalf of Nuance.

Nuance, Dynamic Language Detection and Say Anything are trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.