Osprey to fly at COMDEX; Speech recognition-based phone assistant ready for partners.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 6, 1995--Voice Processing Corporation (VPC) announced today that it will be demonstrating Osprey, its speech recognition-enabled personal telephone assistant, at SOFTBANK COMDEX, Nov. 13-17, 1995 at the Sands Expo booth No. 5323, street level.

The unveiling at Comdex marks the completion of the integration of TAPI with VPC's VProFlex' speech recognition engine enabling Osprey to screen, transfer and place calls using voice commands over the telephone. TAPI is the telephony API co-developed by Microsoft and Intel Corporation to support the integration of computers and telephones at the desktop. Voice Processing Corporation is now negotiating with potential hardware partners to OEM and distribute the product.

Similar in concept to Wildfire Communications' Electronic Assistant, which also uses VPC's speech recognition technology, Osprey performs all the call management telephone related activities typically done by a receptionist -- but for the small office/home office (SOHO) market. Its spoken user interface (SUI) allows users to interact directly with the application by speaking naturally into the telephone. Osprey screens incoming calls and automatically forwards them to owners at remote locations based on its ability to recognize callers' names.

Osprey will screen calls for its owner and will relay messages from the owner to specific callers:

Osprey: Hello, this is Osprey, the automated attendant for Beth Willen.

Who is calling please? Caller: Pete Darden. Osprey: You have a message. Would you like to hear it? Caller: Yes. (Osprey plays message.) Osprey: Do you want to hear the message again or shall I put you

through? Caller: Put me through. Osprey: Please hold. The line will be silent while I try to connect

you. Osprey: You have a call from Pete Darden. Do you want to take the

call? Owner: Yes.

Owners may also call Osprey to retrieve voice mail while they are out of the office and place return calls for them:

Owner: Check my messages. Osprey: Which ones? Owner: Play messages from Pete Darden. Osprey: You have one message from Pete Darden. (Osprey plays the

message.) Osprey: What do you want to do now? Owner: Return the call.

Small business owners who are frequently out of the office miss critical phone calls. An owner can tell Osprey where he or she can be reached and Osprey will automatically transfer calls to that location. If the owner is unavailable for a period of time, he or she can call from outside the office and ask Osprey whether a specific client has called and left a message. Osprey then plays the message and places a return phone call for the owner if asked to do so. To minimize telephone tag, an owner may also leave a private message for a specific caller that Osprey will play when the caller says his or her name.

"Until now, small office and home office workers have not been able to afford the luxury of a personal assistant that handles their telephone communications," said Elizabeth Cholawsky, vice president of the speech applications business unit at Voice Processing Corporation. "Osprey provides that service at a cost that is affordable to anyone with a personal computer. With Osprey handling their calls, even the most mobile of small business professionals are readily accessible to their clients and business contacts."

Osprey is positioned to take advantage of two explosive trends -- the new application opportunities made possible by computer-telephony integration (CTI) and the SOHO market's increasing demand for computing solutions. Dataquest studies indicate that purchases of CTI "application software and links" by SOHO users will grow at a rate of 85% per year between 1995 and 1999. At the same time, subscriber studies funded by Home Office Computing show that 57% of its subscribers plan to purchase a new PC in 1996, even though 74% of them already have a 486- or Pentium equipped computer.

Osprey is designed to run on an IBM PC-compatible computer equipped with an Intel Pentium microprocessor running either Microsoft Windows 95 or Microsoft Windows 3.11. It requires a minimum of 8MB of RAM as well as a minimum of 50MB of hard disk space (includes allocation for voice mail and messages). The communication requirements are a single analog telephone line with 3-way calling and a standard telephone plus a TAPI compliant Fax/Data/Voice modem which supports routing of telephone audio signals through a Windows wave device. Interested business partners should contact Elizabeth Cholawsky at 617/494-0100 for more information.

Founded in 1983, Voice Processing Corporation is a leading developer of robust over the telephone speech recognition technology for the development of telecommunications, cellular, and personal computer speech applications. The company's VPro product line consists of field-proven speaker-independent and speaker-dependent continuous and discrete speech recognition hardware and software. These products allow original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), value-added resellers (VARs), system integrators and application developers to develop voice mail, voice-activated dialing, interactive voice response, computer-telephony integration and command & control of personal computers.

Headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., VPC's customers include Stratus Computer, Inc., IBM and Creative Labs, Inc. VPC's end-users include Hewlett-Packard Co., NYNEX, Southwestern Bell Mobility, Contel Cellular and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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Throughout this release, software and hardware products are mentioned by name. In most, if not all, cases, these product names are claimed as trademarks by the companies that manufacture the products. It is not our intention to claim these names or trademarks as our own.

CONTACT: Elyse Familant or Jack Armstrong

George Cohen Communications Voice Processing Corp.

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