CereProc, a longstanding speech synthesis technology company, has launched its powerful text-to-speech (TTS) CereVoice Cloud software-as-a-service (SaaS (News - Alert)), meeting the needs of developers requiring speech output, as well as fast and easy access to the advanced CereVoice TTS engine on any platform. With its public beta having just gone live, the launch of CereVoice Cloud is expected to really make a splash in the speech technology market, especially with its ability to make high quality synthetic speech more easily accessible.

A company which has built synthetic voices for legendary film critic Roger Ebert and American Football star Steve Gleason, CereProc has designed CereVoice TTS so that it truly delivers a cost effective and high quality solution, offering an alternative to the current industry leaders – such as Nuance (News - Alert) and Ivona – which will in turn drive improvements in the end products for users.

Additionally, this cloud-based service will enable application developers to integrate speech into their applications without needing to install a TTS engine, thus allowing them to maintain the lowest implementation costs as possible, while also keeping integration time to a minimum for a quality TTS system.

CereVoice TTS was first and foremost designed with the intention of increasing accessibility to state-of-the-art TTS software via SOAP and REST web service API’s. This new cloud service is also compatible with platforms that do not allow native development – such as Windows Phone (News - Alert) 7 – as well as those systems which provide low powered Internet-connected devices that cannot typically run a powerful TTS engine.

“We’re extremely excited about launching the CereVoice Cloud service to users. It is a perfect environment for application developers who want to use text to speech (TTS) to enhance their applications appeal, but may have been put off by the cost of existing TTS systems or a lack of TTS experience,” explained Dr. Matthew Aylett, chief technical officer at CereProc. “In addition, a SaaS offers an ideal solution for developers wishing to try out CereProc's voices before they integrate our other speech technologies with their applications.  Now everyone with an interest in CereProc’s system has a simple and extremely cost-effective way of trying out our technology.”

CereProc’s additional advanced functionality also ensures that developers using the SaaS model are able to use nearly any programming language on any platform, in order to generate the most sophisticated TTS output.

Offering an aggressive pricing structure for a quality synthetic speech system and a transparent yet equally effective service that can be used in a wide range of applications, the service undoubtedly harnesses the power of CereProc’s speech synthesis technology as reflected by the users’ needs.

“Many of the users of the system are experienced application developers across Europe and the US, who have provided extensive feedback which has already been fed into the service.  We believe that users know what they want from systems they work with, and will continue to develop the CereVoice Cloud.  We aim to enhance the quality and usability of the service, while simultaneously driving down costs of integration and implementation of the voice software,” Aylett concluded.