Microsoft Corp. has announced the availability of its latest series of speech and telephony platform, Microsoft Speech Server 2007 beta, which is scheduled to release in fall 2006. The new product includes tools that simplify the application development process from start to finish as well as next-generation speech recognition capabilities.

Microsoft has built several new features into Speech Server 2007 that will provide the tools needed to build and refine robust applications that deliver a more satisfying experience for customers.

Advisor Technology in Speech Server 2007 provides best-practice guidance during authoring and refinement of the grammar, which is the vocabulary of a speech-enabled application. Conversational Understanding enables people to speak more naturally when interacting with a Speech Server-powered application. Dialog Workflow Designer provides a simple drag-and-drop tool for designing applications and call flows.

“The powerful tools in Speech Server 2007 dramatically reduce the cost and complexity of building and maintaining customer-friendly self-service systems, freeing your agents to focus on high-value transactions and high-touch customer service,”

Microsoft said Speech Server 2007 will be a global release with support for touch-tone applications around the world and speech-enabled applications in Canadian French, English (U.S. and U.K.), German, and U.S. Spanish at launch. Using the language pack expansion capability built into Speech Server 2007, additional languages can be introduced independently over time, the company said.