(May 10, 2002) - Microsoft Corp. has announced the beta release of the Microsoft® .NET Speech Software Development Kit (SDK), the industry's first Web developer tool and the industry's first product deployment based on the Speech Application Language Tags (SALT) specification. The SDK seamlessly integrates into the Visual Studio® .NET development environment and will make it faster and easier for Web developers to incorporate speech functionality into Web applications and create new business opportunities by leveraging their existing Web development knowledge and skills.

"The Microsoft .NET Speech SDK is a major breakthrough for the industry," said Brian Strachman, senior analyst for Voice Applications at Cahners In-Stat Group. "Expensive, proprietary speech systems have kept speech application development to a niche market. Now, millions of Web developers will be able to draw upon their programming skills to add speech functionality to Web applications, opening up opportunities for enterprises to develop new offerings and extend their Web investments to a larger customer base."

The .NET Speech SDK is a set of SALT-based speech application development tools and speech controls that integrate with Visual Studio .NET. It is the first speech toolkit to integrate with a Web server programming environment, Microsoft ASP.NET

The .NET Speech SDK, which will ship this week, will allow developers to write combined speech and visual Web applications in a single code base that is easy to maintain and modify, and test those applications at their workstation. It includes tools for debugging and creating simple and robust grammars and prompts, as well as sample applications and tutorials. It also includes a set of SALT-based ASP.NET controls that will allow developers to add speech capabilities into their HTML and XHTML Web applications. The .NET Speech SDK will ship with speech extensions for Microsoft Internet Explorer browser software.