title: Difference between the various Microsoft Speech technologies
body: <p>I am looking to write an application that will convert speech-to-text and vice versa for a warehouse application.  The main use case will be that an operator will be wearing a headset in the warehouse and sending instructions back to a server and receiving instructions from the warehouse software to pick and pack orders.  We will be using a headset that is Windows Mobile powered so it can record the voice instructions and send it to a server to parse into text.  </p>
  
  <p>After going through Microsoft's Speech technologies, I'm still not clear on what product suite to consider for this project.  I called up their Sales line and they couldn't offer any help outside of selling licenses to me.  </p>
  
  <p>Can someone shed some light on what these technologies provide and what recommended scenarios they cover?  I'm finding the descriptions on the Microsoft website to be overlapping and they don't highlight the unique usage scenario per technology.
  <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/speech/developers.aspx" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.microsoft.com/speech/developers.aspx</a> </p>
  
  <p>1) Unified Communications Managed API</p>
  
  <p>2)  Speech Server 2007</p>
  
  <p>3) Tellme Studio</p>
  
  <p>4) .NET 3.X System.Speech</p>
  
  <p>4) Speech API (SAPI?)</p>
  
  <p>Thanks in advance.</p>
  
  <p>Surinder</p>