Microsoft Corp. today introduced the Speech Partner Program (SPP), designed to provide additional revenue and profit opportunities for new and existing partners interested in developing, deploying and reselling enterprise-grade speech technology solutions based on Microsoft� technologies. Through the new program, Microsoft Speech partners will gain competitive advantage by providing large and medium-sized enterprise customers with new and value-added product and service offerings based on the Microsoft Speech Server. The Microsoft Speech Server, the most recent addition to the Windows Server System (TM) family, is designed to enable the delivery of enterprise-grade, mission-critical speech technology solutions for both telephony (voice-only) and multimodal (speech and visual) applications.

"Our goal of making speech a widely available and pervasive technology is not an effort Microsoft is undertaking alone," said James Mastan, director of marketing for the Speech Technologies team at Microsoft. "The Speech Partner Program is designed to facilitate new partner revenue opportunities in a rapidly growing speech marketplace, and enable our partners to deliver high-value, enterprise-grade speech solutions on the Microsoft Speech Server."