Without such speech-mining, says Mr Eslambolchi, it would take too much time to develop the hundreds of thousands of voice applications that will exist one day.Equally important, voice applications are national, even regional, says Paul Barnes, sales director of Fluency, a British voice-application firm.
At the same time, the applications firm might develop its own products into "middleware" that would allow other applications producers to write programs running on multiple underlying operating systems.
That is because the merger of Oracle, which is primarily a database company but is also the world's third-largest applications vendor, and PeopleSoft, the second-largest applications firm, will produce a quasi-duopoly with SAP, the market leader.
Like a crab shedding its old shell, the applications firm would be able to scuttle off unscathed, owning both the new.NET platform and the services that run on it.In addition, although Windows is a foundation stone in the current vision of.NET, there is no reason why.NET services should not also work on other operating systems in future.
The remaining applications firm would, for its part, have an equal interest in ensuring smooth integration with differing versions of Windows; and it would want to make both Office and BackOffice (which includes Microsoft's database product) available on Linux, the fledgling open-source Windows rival, and on every flavour of commercial Unix operating systems.
If John J. Moores is out to embarrass BMC Software, the $1.6 billion (sales) mainframe applications firm he founded in 1980, it's with a strong motive.
Instead of building a separate computer system for voice applications, firms can use their existing web infrastructure to power them.
The competing camps are now hammering out an improved open standard.With the web showing the way, voice-applications firms have learned to love open standards.
A few niche players, such as Adobe or Autodesk, may well remain independent, but many medium-sized applications firms, such as Siebel, a struggling maker of sales and marketing applications, look vulnerable.
Yet Ellison personally has invested in two applications firms that have fared far better.
Tim Caughern, chief executive of Caughern & Associates, said the trial modification was the result of an application his firm submitted on Ms. Girard-Blakey's behalf in November 2009.
