Avaya Acquires Speech Analytics Vendor Aurix

Just two weeks after closing its deal to acquire VoIP and unified communications technology provider Sipera, Avaya today announced it has acquired Aurix, a global provider of speech analytics and audio data mining technology.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Aurix, which is based in England, will now become a wholly owned subsidiary of Avaya. Aurix's technologies, which include a phonetic audio search engine built on scalable, open architecture and enabling real-time and historical analysis of one-to-one or group spoken interactions, will be incorporated into Avaya's contact center and unified communications portfolios. The first products incorporating the new technology will likely be available in the first quarter of 2012, according to Jonathan Varman, an Avaya spokesman.

Aurix's patented technology enables real-time identification, search and data mining of large volumes of audio and audio-visual material. Built on scalable, open architecture, the company’s applications integrate with Avaya Aura as well as applications from other vendors. Aurix’s solutions help increase the efficiency and effectiveness of customer service and collaboration events, as well as support compliance requirements and expand business intelligence.

"We at Avaya see speech analytics as an important element in our contact center and unified communications portfolio," Varman says. "It will help us provide our customers with a more holistic solution to enhance the overall customer experience."

Another key element in the deal is the technology's ability to not just analyze the data but also to place it in context to drive better decision-making, Varman adds.

Aurix was seen as an attractive acquisition target because its technology provides the ability to search and analyze large volumes of real-time and historical data, to improve corporate communications, to create a more collaborative environment, and to draw context from the conversation, he says.

"The value of document search engines is widely understood. There's another dimension of data that is largely untapped, however, and that is the information exchanged through spoken interactions," Brett Shockley, senior vice president of corporate development, strategy, and innovation at Avaya, said in a statement. "Aurix's technology will help enable Avaya's customers to quickly find the interactions that can impact their ability to attain high customer satisfaction and increase revenue generation. The analysis of these interactions can drive enhancements in processes that advance their business objectives."

Peter Rogers, CEO of Aurix, added: "Voice interactions represent a vast resource of untapped knowledge. Aurix has focused on building easy-to-use solutions to extract this intelligence to create competitive advantage. The combination of Avaya Aura and Aurix’s speech analytics solutions offer a number of opportunities to create business and customer value that we look forward to accelerating through this acquisition. Our common approach of using an open architecture and focusing on the user experience makes this a good fit for both of us."

Dan Miller, senior analyst at Opus Research, likes the combination. "Avaya is bringing a robust set of analytic tools into its mainstream products that will add an important component to the quality of service that Avaya delivers to their enterprise customers and to their customers in turn," he said.