AVST Introduces Atom

A lot of what you see at Enterprise Connect is various vendors playing leapfrog with various new features and capabilities. Be it iPad docks, virtualization, or mobile apps, a lot of the stuff is just "me too," rather than a new twist on communications.

There were some interesting innovations at Enterprise Connect 2013 - one of them being Atom from Applied Voice and Speech Technologies (AVST). Atom is a fresh take on the personal assistant. There have been various attempts at this over the years, from Wildfire to Siri, but AVST is using it to empower the primary user as well as the caller. It is effectively acting like a 24/7 office manager that understands the context of a given situation.

Atom is really more of an architecture than a product. Initially, it will tie into AVST's CX series of products, but that will expand as will its sources of information. Atom addresses the challenge of giving the caller more information (context) to determine the shortest path to resolution. For example, is it better to leave someone a voice mail or seek an alternative contact? The answer depends on the situation, and most people don't regularly update their outgoing voice mail greeting with updated availability information.

Atom notes the primary user's digital trail to ascertain context. It knows your location either from the geo-awareness within the mobile client (Android and iOS), or by sensing which Wi-Fi network is near. It also checks your presence status on Lync. It views your calendar. It even knows if your Plantronics headset is on. It uses this information to ascertain the best way to process incoming calls. If your presence is in "do not disturb," it will route incoming calls to your voicemail box. Atom is in sync with your calendar, and can notify callers you are "in a meeting and will be back at 10 a.m."

Atom knows your location, business contacts, messages, and presence status. That might sound a bit creepy, but keep in mind AVST isn't an advertising company -- this awareness is kept within an organization's private implementation.

It also has a rich UC feature set that includes unified messaging, hands-free speech recognition, single number reach, and mobile number protection. Atom provides unified messaging and works with a wide variety of email systems (premise-based and public cloud) and integrates with every major voice platform.

As a personal assistant, Atom can provide the primary user a speech interface to their own information. It uses a Nuance speech recognition engine to interpret spoken requests. For example, since it knows your contacts, it can "call John Smith." Atom can "get new messages" and summarize the day's appointments with "get my calendar for today." Plus, Atom is multi-lingual.

Atom will be available in CX-E/S 8.5, which will be released in the next quarter through AVST's reseller channels worldwide.