Lernout & Hauspie Broadens Support for Dialogic's CT Media Server Software

Business Wire, Jan 18, 2000

Business/Technology Editors

BURLINGTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 18, 2000

L&H RealSpeak Will Provide Natural Sounding Voice for

Telecommunications Developers Using CT MediaServer Software

Lernout & Hauspie (NASDAQ:LHSP)(EASDAQ:LHSP) (L&H(TM)) today announced that it will integrate its L&H RealSpeak(TM) text-to-speech (TTS) technology with CT Media(TM) server software for Windows NT(R) from Dialogic(R), an Intel Company. The integration will give over 200,000 application developers the opportunity to employ natural sounding TTS when building open telecommunications servers. The integration of L&H RealSpeak with CT Media server software builds on a long-standing relationship between the two companies in which L&H's speech engines have supported CT Media server software in an effort to help drive the use of speech technology in telecommunications.

CT Media server software is the first open server software for designing standards-based telecommunications servers that support messaging, IVR, fax, automatic call distribution, and other applications from different vendors. The L&H RealSpeak engine is a new TTS technology that reads aloud any text with a human sounding voice and is currently available in US English, French, German and Korean. With the addition of L&H RealSpeak L&H now provides a family of engines on CT Media server software including the TTS3000 text-to-speech and ASR1500 automatic speech recognition. When combined, the Dialogic and L&H technologies allow developers to deploy a natural sounding synthetic voice when creating a wide range of telecommunications industry applications that help improve productivity, efficiency and customer satisfaction.

"The integration of L&H RealSpeak with Dialogic CT Media server software is a natural evolution of our long-standing relationship with Dialogic and its parent, Intel," said Philip Van Cleven, director of product management for L&H's telephony division. "Throughout our relationship we've shared a common vision for open, standards-based development of speech-enabled applications including text-to-speech and automatic speech recognition technologies for a wide range of industries."

"As the industry moves to converged communications, Dialogic and L&H are paving the way for speech-driven, open communications systems," said Michael Ehrlich, product manager, Dialogic. "Market demands for speech-enabled applications are growing, and the rich suite of L&H speech engines that support CT Media gives developers a full range of speech technologies with which to quickly enable their open communications applications."

L&H Family of Speech Engines

L&H RealSpeak rounds out L&H's suite of telephony engine solutions, that range from a new large vocabulary speech recognizer to small vocabulary recognizer engines to text to speech technology -- each available for a variety of platforms, languages and environments. The combination of these products enables L&H to offer a complete solution to telephony developers and vendors looking to voice-enable the next generation of call centers, IVR applications and other telephone-based services.

L&H expects to add to L&H RealSpeak's support for US English, French, German and Korean with approximately 12 additional languages in 2000.

About Lernout & Hauspie

Lernout & Hauspie (L&H) is a global leader in advanced speech and language solutions for vertical markets, computers, automobiles, telecommunications, embedded products, consumer goods and the Internet. The company is making the speech user interface (SUI) the keystone of simple, convenient interaction between humans and technology, and is using advanced translation technology to break down language barriers. The company provides a wide range of offerings, including: customized solutions for corporations; core speech technologies marketed to OEMs; end user and retail applications for continuous speech products in horizontal and vertical markets; and document creation, human and machine translation services, Internet translation offerings, and linguistic tools. L&H's products and services originate in four basic areas: automatic speech recognition (ASR), text-to-speech (TTS), digital speech and music compression (SMC) and text-to-text (translation). For more information, please visit Lernout & Hauspie on the World Wide Web at www.lhs.com or www.lhsl.com.

This News Release contains forward-looking information that involves risks and uncertainties, including statements about the company's plans, objectives, expectations and intentions. Such statements include, without limitation, discussions concerning the company's strategic direction, new product introductions and developments, and the expected developments of targeted markets. Readers are cautioned that such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially than those set forth in the forward looking statements. The risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, the company's reliance on sales by its customers and strategic partners to generate recurring revenues, the early stage of the speech technology market, the management of growth, the successful integration of the company's recent acquisitions, the ability of the company and its customers and strategic partners to develop and successfully market new products, the ability of the company to enter into advantageous strategic alliances, rapid technological change and competition. The forward-looking statements contained herein speak only as of the date of this News Release. The company expressly disclaims any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any such statement to reflect any change in the company's expectations or any change in events, conditions or circumstance on which any such statement is based.