Product Bulletin No. EOL1102
Cisco Systems© announces the end-of-sale and end-of life dates for the Cisco© Nuance Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and Nuance Text-To-Speech (TTS) for IP IVR and IPCC Express 3.X products. The last day to order the affected product is May 15, 2006. Customers with active service contracts will continue to receive support from the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC) until August 27, 2009. Table 1 describes the end-of-life milestones, definitions, and dates for the affected product. Table 2 lists the product part numbers affected by this announcement.
This announcement makes the ASR/TTS sales model for IPIVR and IPCC Express consistent with the Cisco Customer Voice Portal where partners work directly with ASR/TTS providers to procure the necessary technology. Cisco Systems has negotiated with the product supplier of these products to ensure customers using these products will be able to migrate to new versions of the product after Cisco Systems stops selling the existing product. Please note that this end-of-sale and end-of-life announcement affects product features that have been available with IPIVR and IPCC Express 3.X products only. Cisco Systems will continue to renew SAS service agreements until End of service contract renewal date, with customer understanding that Cisco will only be able to support the features compatible with IPIVR and IPCC Express 3.X. Cisco Systems will no longer supply upgrades to ASR or TTS, and will stop selling and renewing Software Application Support plus Upgrades (SASU) service agreements. Customers are encouraged to migrate to IPCC Express/IPIVR 4.0 and the ASR and TTS products offered by Nuance. Those products provide significantly better speech recognition and speech synthesis capabilities. To encourage customers to migrate, Cisco and Nuance will be providing a special offer to upgrade their ASR/TTS to Nuance's latest versions, available with IPCC Express/IPIVR 4.0. Cisco recommends that customers migrating to the latest versions of ASR/TTS, which are compatible with IPCC Express/IPIVR 4.0, purchase support for those ASR/TTS products directly from Nuance. Table 1 describes the end-of-life milestones, definitions, and dates for the affected product. Table 2 lists the product part numbers affected by this announcement.
Table 1. End-of-Life Milestones and Dates for the Nuance Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) for IP IVR and Nuance Text-To-Speech (TTS) for IP IVR.
Table 2. Product Part Numbers Affected by This Announcement
PRODUCT MIGRATION OPTIONS
Customers with Nuance ASR/LNSR and Nuance TTS for IPIVR have the ability to upgrade to Nuance's latest ASR and TTS products through a third-party integrator or directly from Nuance. Because these products are not available directly from Cisco, Nuance is providing a one-year offer for customers who have Nuance ASR/Nuance TTS to move to Nuance's latest products at 10 percent of their standard product fees and the purchase of maintenance. This will allow customers to upgrade to the latest supported versions of ASR and TTS products. Nuance offers OpenSpeech Recognizer and Nuance 8.5 as the market-leading ASR engines. Nuance also offers RealSpeak as the market-leading TTS solution. This offer will be available for one year and is available to all current Nuance ASR/Nuance TTS customers. In addition, if a current Cisco customer has not purchased any Nuance speech technology, customers can purchase the latest versions of Nuance software and receive a 20 percent discount off of list price, with a full maintenance contract, when purchased by June 30, 2006. To redeem the product offers from Nuance (of for new sales), please contact the Inside Sales Team at Nuance, phone number 801 446-4192. Nuance Sales will collect all the appropriate company information and determine the best package for the customer. Nuance has established selected resellers in geographic areas that will fulfill product request and provide joint value-added services and support.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
For more information about the Cisco Nuance Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) for IP IVR and Nuance Text-To-Speech (TTS) for IP IVR, visit http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns340/ns394/ns165/ns45/ns250/net_value_proposition09186a00800b6741.html or contact your local account representative.
For more information about the Cisco End-of-Life Policy, go to:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/prod_end_of_life.html.
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/prod_end_of_life.html.
To subscribe to receive end-of-life/end-of-sale information, go to:
http://www.cisco.com/cgi-bin/Support/FieldNoticeTool/field-notice.
http://www.cisco.com/cgi-bin/Support/FieldNoticeTool/field-notice.