Al Alamiah Electronics presents Sakhr's Arabic Speech Technologies

The seminar, which presented Sakhr's speech technologies, was held on Monday, February 3rd, 2003, at Al Dana Hall, Sheraton Hotel in Kuwait, in the presence of prominent executives from Intel and Emerging Technologies.

This seminar was part of a series of similar gatherings held by Sakhr in Dubai and Cairo, following the summit meeting hosted by Dubai Internet City, the event which brought together Mohamad Al Sharekh, Chairman, Al Alamiah Group and Craig Barett CEO, Intel.

The event included lectures presented by experts from Intel, Al Alamiah & Emerging Technologies and was attended by a large gathering of senior decision makers and IT personnel from various government organizations & departments, in addition to high-ranking executives & IT officials from banks, telecommunications companies, Internet Service Providers and other related businesses from the private sector. The seminars focused on Sakhr's Arabic text to speech engine, automatic speech recognition and related applications, detailing the ways in which these technologies can fulfill the demands of government sectors and the business related activities of banking and commercial sectors which deal with large numbers of customers.

Mr. Riyad Al-Sharekh, Manager, Al Alamiah Electronics, launched the seminar by welcoming the event's host and honored guests. He went on to summarize the importance of the technologies presented at this event, which are considered the fruitful result of the strong collaboration of large international companies, and added: "We at Al Alamiah and Sakhr are happy to build an alliance with Intel, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, Oracle and whoever extends us the hand of cooperation, with the aim of working together towards launching the best and the most advanced technologies in the Arabic language."

Mr. Mohammed Al Roumi also addressed the attendees and expressed his delight that Sakhr Software Co., the leading Arab company which started its activities on Kuwaiti land, has entered the era of forging international alliances. He praised the company's admirable accomplishments in presenting top-notch solutions & technologies, keeping-up with contemporary IT advances, and its continued efforts towards automation and the execution of e-Governments. Mr. Al Roumi reiterated the importance of speech technologies to the Diwan of Civil Services and the various e-Government applications.

Commenting on this international alliance, Mr. Gilbert Lacroix, Intel MENA General Manager, stated: "We are delighted that Sakhr has made such great breakthroughs in bringing useful benefits of Intel's Technology to the Arab World. In particular a program that eases the interaction of blind people with society is the kind of breakthrough that we can all be very proud of."

After the welcoming notes, the seminar took off with the various lectures and demonstrations focusing on the ease of developing solutions based on Arabic speech, detailing technological specifications to participating developers and illustrating the ways in which Sakhr's technology complements Intel platforms and Microsoft environment, thereby developing solutions and programs specific to them.

Monzer George Yazigi, Business Solutions Manager, Al-Alamiah Electronics Company, demonstrated Sakhr speech technology role in E-Gov and how it can enhance business achievements. Directory Assistance (DA) was a typical demo application that was presented by Mr. Yazigi as it shows the full power and capabilities of Sakhr Speech Technologies.

Tony Prince, Business Development Manager, Intel Middle East, gave an overview of the many aspects of cooperation between Intel and Sakhr, illustrating how Sakhr's Arabic speech technology complements Intel platforms, thus presenting Arab developers with the opportunity of developing solutions based on the latest Arab & international technologies.

In his turn, Mr. Sassine Mazraani, Marketing Director, Emerging Technologies, presented the applications his company have built using Sakhr's technology.

The lectures addressed various practical applications to Sakhr's Arabic speech technology, within the telecommunications and banking sectors, and voice portals, which include Interactive Voice Response (IVR), Unified Messaging Solutions, Flight Information Systems, Airport Management Systems, call centers, Directory Assistance Services, Stock Exchange Management Systems, Customer Relationship Management Systems (CRM), News broadcasting systems, billing systems, Audiotext services, School Management Systems and Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

END