NICE Systems is acquiring speech software company Nexidia, which specializes in advanced speech and interaction analytics, for $135 million. Nexidia's analytics products are backed by patents for phonetic indexing and search capabilities, features that will integrate with NICE's existing services to provide enhanced analytics-based solutions.
"One of the key areas is the ability to provide to the market the best technology that is available today for analytics, combining the strengths of where NICE has brought analytics to today with the strength that Nexidia brings around the accuracy of the solution, the scalability of it, the ability to provide timely information, and fast searches," says Aviad Abiri, vice president of portfolio sales enablement at NICE Systems. "We're referring to this as 'analytics with no limits'—the idea that there is really no excuse any more for not adopting this type of technology."
The integration between NICE and Nexidia's services is intended to deliver an enhanced analytics-based solution with improved accuracy, scalability that optimizes the lowest total cost of ownership, and real-time analytics.
"If you look at the kind of metrics that the industry is looking at today as far as accuracy, number of audio hours processed daily, we're talking about solutions that are almost 10 times faster than what's out there today," Abiri says.
According to Abiri, Nexidia's grid-based architecture and ability to run both transcription and phonetics indexing will be especially useful when combined with NICE's existing solutions.
Barak Eilam, CEO of NICE Systems, extolled the move in a statement:
"The acquisition of Nexidia is part and parcel of our strategy to enhance our analytics offering. It is an important step in our mission to deliver the power of customer data and insight beyond the contact center. Nexidia enjoys a reputation for unrivaled technology and domain expertise. Their addition to our company will solidify NICE's position as an analytics powerhouse."
John Willcutts, CEO at Nexidia, expressed similar feelings in a separate statement, saying that the union of the two companies technologies can create a ";win-win scenario" for customers.
"It's really about providing the most powerful set of analytics—one that can really touch upon the entire range of use cases that our customers have today," Abiri says.