ININ Interactive Intelligence Grp., Inc.

Interactive Intelligence to Offer Advanced Speech Recognition Capabilities; Patents Pending INDIANAPOLIS, Oct. 30 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Interactive Intelligence Inc. , a global developer of software for IP telephony, contact center automation and unified communications, has developed and filed patents for new speech recognition capabilities to appear in the next release of its product line. (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/19990914/IILOGO ) Beta shipments of this latest release, version 2.3, have already begun and initial customer installations are expected before the end of the year. "Yankee Group research shows speech recognition technology has entered a maturity phase, with about 35 percent of enterprises looking to expand their successful systems" said Art Schoeller, senior analyst for Yankee Group. "The remaining enterprises still have lingering concerns about accuracy and the cost of deployment. By providing easy to use, high-level development tools, along with support of standards such as SGRS, VoiceXML, and SALT Interactive Intelligence's 2.3 software will help reduce development costs and allow flexibility of choice among speech technologies." The new software includes capabilities such as: - An engine-agnostic interface that enables speech-enabled applications to be independent of a particular speech recognition engine - Built-in support of the Scansoft (formerly SpeechWorks), Nuance and Aculab engines - An N+1 architecture that enables speech recognition sessions to be handled by any number of servers for scalability and fault tolerance - The ability to simultaneously deploy speech recognition engines from different vendors, and to use rules to determine which sessions are serviced by which engine. For example, a call from a high priority customer could be serviced by a more expensive, full-featured engine while a call from a lower priority customer could be serviced by a less expensive engine - Support for the Speech Recognition Grammar Specification developed by the World Wide Web Consortium - Speaker identification and verification "These features make deploying speech recognition less expensive by easing the development, administration and supervision of speech-enabled applications such as interactive voice response, auto-attendant, Web portals, voice mail and many others," said Dr. Donald E. Brown, president and chief executive officer of Interactive Intelligence. "In particular, the ability to use engines from different vendors enables organizations to save money by licensing a small number of ports from an expensive engine for normal usage, and a larger number of ports from a less expensive engine for peak capacity." The first product to take advantage of the new speech recognition features will be version 2.3 of Interactive Intelligence's award-winning contact center automation software, Customer Interaction Center(TM) (CIC). Releases of the company's enterprise IP telephony software, Enterprise Interaction Center(R) (EIC), and its unified communications software, Communite(R), will follow in the first half of 2004. All three products will support speech recognition across a variety of telephony architectures, including traditional circuit-switched, voice over IP using session initiation protocol, and Cisco's AVVID platform. Interactive Intelligence also plans to add support for VoiceXML and Microsoft's SALT in the first half of 2004. About Interactive Intelligence Inc. Interactive Intelligence Inc. (NASDAQ:ININ) is a global developer of software for IP telephony, contact center automation and unified communications. The company was founded in 1994 and has more than 1,000 customers worldwide. Recent awards include Software Magazine's 2002 Top 500 Global Software and Services Companies, the Deloitte & Touche 2002 Technology Fast 500, Network Computing Magazine's 2003 Editor's Choice, and Internet Telephony Magazine's 2003 Editor's Choice. Interactive Intelligence employs approximately 350 people and is headquartered in Indianapolis, Ind. The company has 12 offices throughout North America, Europe and Asia. Its telephone number is +1 317.872.3000; on the Web: http://www.inin.com/ . This release contains certain forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially are described in the company's SEC filings. Interactive Intelligence Inc. is the owner of the marks INTERACTIVE INTELLIGENCE, its associated LOGO and numerous other marks. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners. Contact: Christine Holley Director, Market Communications Interactive Intelligence Inc. +1 317.715.8220 http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/19990914/IILOGO http://photoarchive.ap.org/ DATASOURCE: Interactive Intelligence, Inc. CONTACT: Christine Holley, director, market communications of Interactive Intelligence Inc., +1-317-715-8220, or Web site: http://www.inin.com/

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