AVST Signs Letter of Intent to Purchase SaaS Technology from Voice Mobility International, Inc.

FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif., July 21 -- Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST) today announced that it has entered into a Letter of Intent to purchase certain assets of Voice Mobility International, Inc. (VMY, VMII and FWB: VMY) (Voice Mobility or VMI).  The principal assets being acquired in this transaction are the Voice Mobility UCN250 software as a service (SaaS) platform and all related technology and customers.  Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

 The UCN250 is a highly scalable and reliable Linux and SIP-based SaaS platform that will be integrated into AVST’s unified communications (UC) solution portfolio to accelerate AVST’s ability to address the evolving communications requirements of current and future AVST customers.

Jay Hutton, Chairman and CEO of Voice Mobility, commented, “This partnership constitutes a critical part of the restructuring of Voice Mobility and the realignment of our strategic focus. Our partnership with AVST extends beyond today’s announced technology acquisition and is expected to be long-term in nature as Voice Mobility prepares to launch a suite of secure cloud-based UC services that will be sold directly into the SMB market.  We are excited to collaborate with AVST as VMI’s UC solutions partner leveraging the UCN250 SaaS platform to create a secure, mobile-centric UC services portfolio.  We will develop this offering in close consultation with AVST and expect to work together in taking it to market.  We believe that this long-term strategic technology partnership with AVST will enable us to bring UC solutions to market more expeditiously than we might otherwise on our own.”

According to AVST President & CEO, Hardy Myers, “The acquisition of VMI’s UCN250 technology fits perfectly with our strategic objective to be an industry leader in delivering best of breed and highly-interoperable premise-based, hybrid and cloud-based UC solutions.”

Closing of the transaction issubject to certain conditions precedent, including the execution of a definitive purchase agreement and satisfactory completion of due diligence by AVST.  Closing is expected to occur on or before December 31, 2010.

About Voice Mobility
Voice Mobility develops and markets its unified communications product line to enterprise, campus and hosted customers. Our product line includes highly scalable Voicemail, Unified Communication, Fax Service, Interactive Voice Response, and Auto-Attendant applications, as well as unique features like Emergency Event Notification, Mobile Client functionality, Presence, Speech applications and Desktop integration with industry leading software providers. Migration options are available allowing the transfer of messages and data from legacy OCTel® messaging servers. For more information, call Jay Hutton at 250-978-5052 or visit www.voicemobility.com.

 

About AVST
Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST) is a leading developer of Unified Communications solutions with over 15 million users relying on its products and services to maximize their productivity. With three decades of innovation excellence, AVST is solely focused on delivering communications solutions that increase individual, group and enterprise productivity. Its flagship Unified Communications platform, CallXpress®, offers best in class interoperability, scalability and resiliency while delivering advanced call processing, voicemail, unified messaging, personal assistant, fax, speech and notification capabilities. With CallXpress, an organization can uniquely protect and extend its existing IT and telephony infrastructure investments — now and into the future.

Headquartered in Orange County, Calif., AVST maintains facilities in Seattle, Wash. and the United Kingdom and has remote sales offices throughout the United States. AVST's Unified Communications solutions are sold and supported internationally by an extensive network of resellers and OEM partners. For more information contact Denny Michael, Vice President of Marketing, at 949-699-2300 or access the company's website at www.avst.com.

Posted via email from AVST - Unified Messaging and Unified Communications

AVST Announces New Version of Repartee

Marks the First Release Since the Acquisition of Active Voice

FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif., July 14, 2010 – Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST), today announced the launch of Repartee^® LX 11.3 and Repartee LXi 11.3 (formerly known as Repartini), which offer hospitality, voicemail, call processing, automated attendant, unified messaging, personal call control and fax applications on a Linux-based platform.  Designed for small and mid-sized businesses, Repartee cost-effectively manages voice communications, improves customer service and increases productivity. The new release bolsters AVST’s offering for the hospitality market and features over 60 property management system integrations including the company’s first IP integration with Micros^® Fidelio, one of the industry’s most popular property management systems.

In April, AVST announced the acquisition of the Active Voice product lines including the Repartee family.  The introduction of Repartee LX and Repartee LXi marks the first new product release since the acquisition was announced and underscores AVST’s commitment to Active Voice customers and channel partners for ongoing support and development of the Active Voice product line.

For over 15 years Repartee has been serving the hospitality industry with a communications solution that facilitates a better hotel experience for guests, while keeping staff connected.  According to Tom Minifie, AVST Chief Technology Officer, “Repartee is well-known in the hospitality industry with a base of the world’s most prestigious hotels that rely on it as an integral part of their communications infrastructure.  This new version has features that come requested directly from our customers and includes a critical integration that will make hotel communications even more efficient and effective.”

Repartee offers all of the most critical communications features for hotel administration and guest communications.  Guest features include unlimited voicemail messages with message retrieval, automatic check-in/check-out, personalized greetings and wake-up call functionality.  Administration features include broadcast messaging to all hotel guests (in the event of an emergency or hotel-wide outage, etc.), custom distribution lists, wake-up call reporting, attendant administration interface and more.

Repartee LX 11.3 and Repartee LXi 11.3 are scheduled for general availability in the next 30 days through AVST’s established reseller channels. For more information about AVST’s products, please visit the company website at www.avst.com.

About AVST
Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST) is a leading developer of Unified Communications solutions with over 15 million users relying on its products and services to maximize their productivity. With three decades of innovation excellence, AVST is solely focused on delivering communications solutions that increase individual, group and enterprise productivity. Its flagship Unified Communications platform, CallXpress®, offers best in class interoperability, scalability and resiliency while delivering advanced call processing, voicemail, unified messaging, personal assistant, fax, speech and notification capabilities. With CallXpress, an organization can uniquely protect and extend its existing IT and telephony infrastructure investments — now and into the future.

Headquartered in Orange County, Calif., AVST maintains facilities in Seattle, Wash. and the United Kingdom and has remote sales offices throughout the United States. AVST's Unified Communications solutions are sold and supported internationally by an extensive network of resellers and OEM partners. For more information contact Denny Michael, Vice President of Marketing, at 949-699-2300 or access the company's website at www.avst.com.

Posted via email from AVST - Unified Messaging and Unified Communications

AVST On-Demand Webcast Building Unified Messaging into Your UC Strategy

Topic: Building Unified Messaging into Your UC Strategy

Description: Not all Unified Messaging solutions are built the same. When implementing Unified Messaging, it's important to select a flexible architecture to facilitate growth and manage your organization's approach to compliance and confidentiality. Critical considerations include multiple storage models within a single deployment, voicemail networking, your organization's security needs, and more. AVST will present the different Unified Messaging architectures and the benefits of each.

Duration: 38 minutes

 

To view the entire presentation, please visit:  http://www.avst.com/downloadcenter/presentation6.asp

For more information on AVST, please visit:  http://www.avst.com

 

 

Webcast Script (first 4 slides)

 

Building Unified Messaging into your UC Strategy

Slide 1 - Building Unified Messaging into your UC Strategy
Good afternoon or morning everyone, depending where you happen to be located here in the United States or wherever else. Welcome again to the webinar. Unified Messaging is really one of those technologies that started to become almost a catch phrase. Everyone's talking about it, everyone's looking towards it. Unified communications is another one of those (UC). Its kind of a big umbrella phrase its one of those phrases that's kind of out there and everyone talks about it but nailing down the definition for it and what's all encompassed in that can sometimes be a challenge. So we're going to take the unified messaging component of unified communications and see how that can fit in the overall plan and how the products from AVST can help you achieve your goals in developing your ongoing unified communications strategy.

Slide 2 - Building Unified Messaging into your UC Strategy
So today, the things we'll take a look at. First, take a look at a snapshot of who AVST is. Kind of go over unified messaging. What is unified messaging? What does it mean? Some people say if you get five people in a room and ask them “what is unified messaging”, you'd get 7 or 8 answers. That can sometimes be true so we're going to kind of define a few terms and get a fixed idea of what unified messaging really is and what the different options are out there. Everyone talks about unified messaging but the method in which it's implemented is different and significantly different based on what products you're looking at. The impact to your organization for those different implementation options can sometimes be very significant. That's what we're going to look at is how to take the architecture of unified messaging, the options available with unified messaging, and what are the things that you really need to consider as your evaluating the pluses and minuses of all the different methods of providing unified messaging. Of course, at the end we'll open it up for questions and answers. Please feel free to submit your questions in the chat window of the sidebar of the counsel or hold your questions until the end. We'll open it up for everybody to ask any types of questions at the end.

Slide 3 - Building Unified Messaging into your UC Strategy
So AVST, applied voice and speech technology. We have been around for a long time. We were actually one of the inventors of voicemail. Voicemail is one of those ubiquitous applications that's out there that we tend to think of has been around forever. But it really got its start in the late 70's and early 80's and AVST was one of the first companies to deliver a voice messaging application. We've been doing it for nearly 30 years now with really being the leaders in delivering advanced applications within this niche of the telecommunications, voice, and data industry. We are singularly focused on this technology and many of the aspects that surround this technology and the ways that this technology can really enhance your implementations to the unified communications strategy.

Slide 4 - Building Unified Messaging into your UC Strategy
We have a broad range of customers; we'll 2ake a snap shot at some of those. One of the things we're very proud of, because of the focus that we have in this particular niche of the industry. If you talk to any of the independent consulting firms that surround the industry, voice and data industry (Gartner, Frost and Sullivan and those types of organizations), and ask them their ideas of the leaders and those companies providing this. Without exception, all of those independent consulting firms will identify AVST and CallXpress as really being one of the most complete solutions that are available in the marketplace today. That really has been validated without presence in the marketplace. Voice Reports did a survey last year, late last year that surveyed many major organizations and enterprises to find out what was the primary voicemail system that they had. We were proud to be, by a wide margin, the leader within that survey that they sampled.

 

 

 

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AVST Announces General Availability of CallXpress 8.1

Sets a New Benchmark in Reliability by Combining Survivability, High Availability and Remote Disaster Recovery

FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif., June 14, 2010 – Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST), a leading developer of Unified Communications solutions, today announced the worldwide general availability of CallXpress® 8.1. The new version of CallXpress ensures enterprise resiliency and sets a new benchmark in reliability by combining survivability, high availability and remote disaster recovery into the platform. AVST continues in its goal to transform individual, group and enterprise productivity by introducing UCConnect™, an open development environment to quickly build innovative applications, and propels its leadership in unified messaging (UM) by expanding support to Google™ Gmail™, Microsoft® Exchange 2010 and Lotus® Notes® 8.5.

Resiliency
An important part of any enterprise IT strategy is continuous application availability. CallXpress 8.1 builds on existing high availability options and enhances disaster recovery initiatives by adding Neverfail’s® remote tertiary functionality to protect the CallXpress System Server against downtime. “The inclusion of the unique multi-tier approach to continuous availability demonstrates AVST’s commitment to enterprise resiliency,” said Paddy Falls, CTO, The Neverfail Group.  Remote tertiary support is an important step forward in eliminating downtime for all users of CallXpress’ mission-critical messaging operations. CallXpress continues to answer calls, transfer calls and take messages during system maintenance, such as adding port capacity or OS updates. All the while, the system remains safe from hardware failure or impending disaster. Moreover, CallXpress now supports up to 20 survivable Call Servers and provides an overall system architecture that offers centralization with a single point of administration.

Transforming Productivity
For three decades AVST has been transforming individual, group and enterprise productivity and has furthered its mission by making UCConnect available in CallXpress 8.1. UCConnect makes .NET ready tools available for developers to build applications which can improve human efficiency, enhance the customer experience and streamline business processes. “UCConnect is to CallXpress what applications are to the iPhone,” said Rob Simpson, President of Advanced Call Processing, an AVST value-added reseller. “UCConnect allows us to quickly create vertical specific applications for our customers in less time.”[[posterous-content:wBrjHiCmslnDpzFrtkki]]

“CallXpress is well-known in the industry as being highly flexible and highly interoperable,” said Tom Minifie, AVST Chief Technology Officer. “By making UCConnect available to our customers, we’re now able to add ‘highly customizable’ to that list. This recent enhancement keeps CallXpress on the cutting edge by offering a greater level of extensibility.”

AVST continues to extend its leadership with CallXpress 8.1, offering support to Google Gmail as well as other secure IMAP e-mail servers and services, Microsoft Exchange 2010 and Lotus Notes 8.5.  Recently, leading industry research firm Gartner examined how to fit UM into a unified communications (UC) plan. “Do not assume that all users have the same requirements — for instance, some may benefit by using e-mail as their primary store for all messages, while others may benefit more from separate stores,”¹ wrote Bern Elliot, Vice President and Distinguished Analyst and Jay Lassman, Research Director with GartnerResearch. CallXpress is the most flexible platform on the market supporting multiple storage models within a single deployment. After years of experience AVST has developed a short list of 5 critical considerations for a successful UM deployment: 1) compliance 2) confidentiality 3) configurations 4) capability 5) cost.

CallXpress 8.1 provides other mission-critical functionality:

• CallXpress Mobile Client allows mobile users the ability to change their availability status from the most popular smartphone devices like the BlackBerry®, iPhone, Android™, Windows Mobile, or any application that can embed a web page, such as Microsoft Outlook® or Office Communicator;
• Windows® 7 Professional support for end-user and administrative client applications.

AVST’s CallXpress is the industry’s most interoperable UC platform with support for over 250 TDM and IP integrations and the ability to support multiple switches. CallXpress delivers call processing, voicemail, unified messaging, personal assistant, fax, speech, and notification capabilities. With CallXpress, an organization can protect and extend its existing data and telephony infrastructure investment — now and into the future.

CallXpress 8.1 is immediately available through AVST’s established reseller channels. For more information about AVST’s products, please visit the company website at www.avst.com.

¹Gartner “Fitting Unified Messaging Into Your Unified Communications Plan,” by Bern Elliot and Jay Lassman.  December 2009

About AVST
Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST) is a leading developer of Unified Communications solutions with over 15 million users relying on its products and services to maximize their productivity. With three decades of innovation excellence, AVST is solely focused on delivering communications solutions that increase individual, group and enterprise productivity. Its flagship Unified Communications platform, CallXpress®, offers best in class interoperability, scalability and resiliency while delivering advanced call processing, voicemail, unified messaging, personal assistant, fax, speech and notification capabilities. With CallXpress, an organization can uniquely protect and extend its existing IT and telephony infrastructure investments — now and into the future.

Headquartered in Orange County, Calif., AVST maintains facilities in Seattle, Wash. and the United Kingdom and has remote sales offices throughout the United States. AVST's Unified Communications solutions are sold and supported internationally by an extensive network of resellers and OEM partners. For more information contact Denny Michael, Vice President of Marketing, at 949-699-2300 or access the company's website at www.avst.com.

Posted via web from AVST - Unified Messaging and Unified Communications

AVST Announces General Availability of CallXpress 8.1

Sets a New Benchmark in Reliability by Combining Survivability, High Availability and Remote Disaster Recovery

FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif., June 14, 2010 – Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST), a leading developer of Unified Communications solutions, today announced the worldwide general availability of CallXpress® 8.1. The new version of CallXpress ensures enterprise resiliency and sets a new benchmark in reliability by combining survivability, high availability and remote disaster recovery into the platform. AVST continues in its goal to transform individual, group and enterprise productivity by introducing UCConnect™, an open development environment to quickly build innovative applications, and propels its leadership in unified messaging (UM) by expanding support to Google™ Gmail™, Microsoft® Exchange 2010 and Lotus® Notes® 8.5.

Resiliency
An important part of any enterprise IT strategy is continuous application availability. CallXpress 8.1 builds on existing high availability options and enhances disaster recovery initiatives by adding Neverfail’s® remote tertiary functionality to protect the CallXpress System Server against downtime. “The inclusion of the unique multi-tier approach to continuous availability demonstrates AVST’s commitment to enterprise resiliency,” said Paddy Falls, CTO, The Neverfail Group.  Remote tertiary support is an important step forward in eliminating downtime for all users of CallXpress’ mission-critical messaging operations. CallXpress continues to answer calls, transfer calls and take messages during system maintenance, such as adding port capacity or OS updates. All the while, the system remains safe from hardware failure or impending disaster. Moreover, CallXpress now supports up to 20 survivable Call Servers and provides an overall system architecture that offers centralization with a single point of administration.

Transforming Productivity
For three decades AVST has been transforming individual, group and enterprise productivity and has furthered its mission by making UCConnect available in CallXpress 8.1. UCConnect makes .NET ready tools available for developers to build applications which can improve human efficiency, enhance the customer experience and streamline business processes. “UCConnect is to CallXpress what applications are to the iPhone,” said Rob Simpson, President of Advanced Call Processing, an AVST value-added reseller. “UCConnect allows us to quickly create vertical specific applications for our customers in less time.”

Click here to download:

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“CallXpress is well-known in the industry as being highly flexible and highly interoperable,” said Tom Minifie, AVST Chief Technology Officer. “By making UCConnect available to our customers, we’re now able to add ‘highly customizable’ to that list. This recent enhancement keeps CallXpress on the cutting edge by offering a greater level of extensibility.”

AVST continues to extend its leadership with CallXpress 8.1, offering support to Google Gmail as well as other secure IMAP e-mail servers and services, Microsoft Exchange 2010 and Lotus Notes 8.5.  Recently, leading industry research firm Gartner examined how to fit UM into a unified communications (UC) plan. “Do not assume that all users have the same requirements — for instance, some may benefit by using e-mail as their primary store for all messages, while others may benefit more from separate stores,”¹ wrote Bern Elliot, Vice President and Distinguished Analyst and Jay Lassman, Research Director with GartnerResearch. CallXpress is the most flexible platform on the market supporting multiple storage models within a single deployment. After years of experience AVST has developed a short list of 5 critical considerations for a successful UM deployment: 1) compliance 2) confidentiality 3) configurations 4) capability 5) cost.

CallXpress 8.1 provides other mission-critical functionality:

• CallXpress Mobile Client allows mobile users the ability to change their availability status from the most popular smartphone devices like the BlackBerry®, iPhone, Android™, Windows Mobile, or any application that can embed a web page, such as Microsoft Outlook® or Office Communicator;
• Windows® 7 Professional support for end-user and administrative client applications.

AVST’s CallXpress is the industry’s most interoperable UC platform with support for over 250 TDM and IP integrations and the ability to support multiple switches. CallXpress delivers call processing, voicemail, unified messaging, personal assistant, fax, speech, and notification capabilities. With CallXpress, an organization can protect and extend its existing data and telephony infrastructure investment — now and into the future.

CallXpress 8.1 is immediately available through AVST’s established reseller channels. For more information about AVST’s products, please visit the company website at www.avst.com.

¹Gartner “Fitting Unified Messaging Into Your Unified Communications Plan,” by Bern Elliot and Jay Lassman.  December 2009

About AVST
Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST) is a leading developer of Unified Communications solutions with over 15 million users relying on its products and services to maximize their productivity. With three decades of innovation excellence, AVST is solely focused on delivering communications solutions that increase individual, group and enterprise productivity. Its flagship Unified Communications platform, CallXpress®, offers best in class interoperability, scalability and resiliency while delivering advanced call processing, voicemail, unified messaging, personal assistant, fax, speech and notification capabilities. With CallXpress, an organization can uniquely protect and extend its existing IT and telephony infrastructure investments — now and into the future.

Headquartered in Orange County, Calif., AVST maintains facilities in Seattle, Wash. and the United Kingdom and has remote sales offices throughout the United States. AVST's Unified Communications solutions are sold and supported internationally by an extensive network of resellers and OEM partners. For more information contact Denny Michael, Vice President of Marketing, at 949-699-2300 or access the company's website at www.avst.com.

Posted via web from avst's posterous

AVST Appoints Active Communications as APAC Distributor

New opportunities for advanced unified communications in the region

 

Users of Active Voice products in APAC have a new guarantee of service and software continuity following the signing of a regional master distribution agreement.

Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST), a leading developer of unified communications (UC) solutions, and Active Communications Australia Pty Ltd, a specialist in UC systems integration and support, have signed an Asia Pacific Master Distribution Agreement for the full range of AVST and Active Voice products.

The agreement brings certainty and opportunity to the local marketplace for both customers and telecommunications integrators for the first time since AVST bought NEC’s Active Voice division last month (AVST and NEC Corporation of America Expand Global Footprint for Unified Communications).

The new relationship signals a commitment from both companies to deliver highly interoperable, scalable and tailored UC solutions to customers across the enterprise.

Paul Baxter, CEO of Active Communications, said, “We are very pleased to be able to provide the structure and long standing technical expertise to allow businesses to confidently go forward with their strategic use of advanced unified communications.”

Hardy Myers, President & CEO of AVST, said, “The signing of Active Communications as our master distributor in the Asia Pacific region will enable us to extend our global reach and accelerate our position in the UC market.” 

Organisations in the region which currently use Active Voice products now have access to the full AVST product range, which includes CallXpress^® 8, a comprehensive UC platform designed to transform individual, group and enterprise productivity.  CallXpress is highly interoperable enabling organisations to maximise the return on their strategic telecom and IT infrastructure investments.

Technologies such as VoIP and UC are bringing telecoms firmly into the realm of IT infrastructure.

Baxter said, “The market is in a state of flux and moving rapidly away from traditional telecommunications to integrated Information Technology & Telecommunication (IT&T). There are huge opportunities for our growing channel network. Voice and data were run as separate departments; now the move is to data managing it all. There are ramifications across the business for direction, strategies and budgets. And there’s more to the new voice world than simply saving money by ditching a few Telco lines,” he said.

Active Communications is currently recruiting PBX resellers and IT&T integrators from around the region who are interested in augmenting their solution offerings with UC.

About Active Communications  www.activecommunications.com.au

Active Communications offers unified communications and system optimisation, support and maintenance for true IT&T integration.

Unified communications (UC) integrates real-time communication services such as telecommunications (including IP telephony), instant messaging, HD video conferencing, telepresence and speech recognition with other communication services such as voicemail, e-mail, SMS & fax and fax over IP.

With more than a decade of unified communications expertise, Active Communications has offices in Melbourne and Hong Kong serving the Asia Pacific region.

It sells and supports Active Voice and AVST products through a reseller network.

About AVST  www.avst.com

Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST) is a leading developer of Unified Communications solutions with over 15 million users relying on its products and services daily to maximise their productivity.  With three decades of innovation excellence, AVST is solely focused on delivering communications solutions that increase individual, group and enterprise productivity. Its flagship Unified Communications platform, CallXpress^®, offers best in class interoperability, scalability and resiliency while delivering advanced call processing, voicemail, unified messaging, personal assistant, fax, speech and notification capabilities.  With CallXpress, an organisation can uniquely protect and extend its existing IT and telephony infrastructure investments— now and into the future.

For further information please contact:

Paul Baxter                       Active Communications Australia      +61 3 8796 5388
Shuna Boyd                      BoydPR                                              +61 2 9418 8100

Posted via web from avst's posterous

AVST Demonstrates Full Line of Products at the 2010 National ACUTA Conference and Exhibition

Features High Resiliency and Unified Messaging to Google Gmail with CallXpress

SAN ANTONIO, Texas, April 19, 2010 - This week at the 39^th Annual ACUTA Conference and Exhibition, Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST) will be showcasing its flagship Unified Communications (UC) platform, CallXpress^® 8, at booth #213 on the show floor at the JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country Resort in San Antonio, Texas, on April 18-21.  AVST will focus on the most critical capabilities that enterprises should consider when looking to deploy their next generation UC solution.

AVST intends to clear the confusion for enterprise decision-makers searching for the right solution to migrate from a legacy voicemail environment to UC.  AVST is sponsoring a breakout session during the ACUTA program titled, "8 Critical Capabilities for Building Your Campus Communications," presented by Hardy Myers, President & CEO of AVST.  AVST will identify and weigh the critical capabilities in building a campus telephony infrastructure, including: architecture; scalability; high-availability options; UC integration capability; mobility options; management; diagnostic and remote support; and open standards.  This session is scheduled for Monday, April 19 at 1:15 p.m. – 2:15 p.m. in the Grand Oaks ‘N’ Meeting Room.

AVST will showcase how CallXpress delivers a high level  of resiliency through a  hot standby server and off-site disaster recovery deployment and expands unified messaging capabilities to Google Gmail, Microsoft^® Outlook^®, IBM^® Lotus^® Notes, Novell^® GroupWise^®, Mirapoint^®, or any IMAP4 compliant e-mail system.  CallXpress continues to deliver the core capabilities that are essential to universities and colleges by offering unparalleled PBX integration interoperability, high availability, and scalability to meeting the growing demands to centralize voice networks.

“CallXpress is installed at more than 800 educational institutions and has had great success in the higher education marketplace.  Each year we look forward to participating in ACUTA’s regional events as well as their annual national event, to help higher education campuses replace their outdated voicemail systems with a next-generation communications-enabled platform that supports their UC needs.  Our solution is a natural fit for the ACUTA audience, making this the perfect place to co-strategize while providing attendees with a forum to share information and actively participate in the development of AVST's future offerings," said Denny Michael, AVST's Vice President of Marketing.

AVST is also hosting a User Group Meeting for AVST or Active Voice customers attending the ACUTA conference, which is scheduled for Monday, April 19 at 3:45 p.m. – 5:15 p.m. in the Grand Oaks ‘N’ Meeting Room.  Tom Minifie, CTO of AVST, will present a roadmap for CallXpress 8. User Group member Scott Claverie, of California State University, Chico, will lead the forum on suggested topics from those in attendance.

ACUTA, which stands for the Association for Information Communications Technology Professionals in Higher Education, is an international non-profit educational association serving colleges and universities.  Representing over 1700 individuals at nearly 800 institutions of higher education with members ranging from small schools and community colleges to the 50 largest U.S. institutions, ACUTA's core purpose is to support higher education institutions in achieving optimal use of communications technologies.

CallXpress 8 delivers a powerful suite of UC applications including advanced call processing, voicemail, unified messaging, personal assistant, fax, speech and notification capabilities to help colleges and universities become more mobile and productive.  AVST is a Corporate Affiliate of ACUTA and has been acknowledged for its support of ACUTA's regional and national events over the last five years.  For more information about AVST's products for the higher education marketplace visit the company's website at www.avst.com.  For more information on the AVST CallXpress User Forum please visit www.avst.com/forum.

About AVST

Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST) is a leading developer of Unified Communications solutions with over 15 million users relying on its products and services to maximize their productivity. With three decades of innovation excellence, AVST is solely focused on delivering communications solutions that increase individual, group and enterprise productivity. Its flagship Unified Communications platform, CallXpress®, offers best in class interoperability, scalability and resiliency while delivering advanced call processing, voicemail, unified messaging, personal assistant, fax, speech and notification capabilities. With CallXpress, an organization can uniquely protect and extend its existing IT and telephony infrastructure investments — now and into the future.

Headquartered in Orange County, Calif., AVST maintains facilities in Seattle, Wash. and the United Kingdom and has remote sales offices throughout the United States. AVST's Unified Communications solutions are sold and supported internationally by an extensive network of resellers and OEM partners. For more information contact Denny Michael, Vice President of Marketing, at 949-699-2300 or access the company's website at www.avst.com.

Posted via web from avst's posterous

AVST and NEC Corporation of America Expand Global Footprint For Unified Communications

Integration of NEC Active Voice Division into AVST Strengthens Unified Communications Market Position for Both Companies

FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. and IRVING, Texas, April 5, 2010 – Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST) and NEC Corporation of America (NEC) today announced a long-term strategic technology relationship including the integration of Active Voice, a division of NEC, into AVST.  In addition to seamlessly integrating AVST’s CallXpress^® Unified Communications (UC) platform with NEC’s world class IP telephony and UC solutions, AVST will continue to manufacture, support and enhance specific Active Voice product offerings for NEC, its channel partners and the independent Active Voice channel. 

This relationship increases the global footprint of both companies for UC and the addition of the Active Voice division significantly increases AVST’s addressable customer base with a combined 140,000 systems sold worldwide, to date.  Additionally, the integration expands AVST’s position in the UC marketplace with a broader set of product offerings, access to additional distribution channels and expanded engineering resources for accelerated innovation.  For NEC, the partnership provides integration of its advanced solutions with AVST’s CallXpress UC platform and expanded sales channel opportunities.  The terms of the transaction are not disclosed. 

The new relationship further validates the commitment of both companies to deliver world class UC solutions for small, medium and enterprise-class customers that are highly interoperable, scalable and tailored to meet the needs of individual businesses.  AVST brings three decades of experience and leadership in the UC marketplace and leverages its core strength of delivering solutions that transform individual, group and enterprise productivity while enabling organizations to maximize the return on their strategic telecom and IT infrastructure investments.  NEC, a leading provider and integrator of advanced communications solutions, continues to offer advanced unified communications for businesses and vertical organizations that meet business process improvement needs. 

“We are honored and privileged to enter into this long term strategic technology relationship with NEC.  Extending our relationship with one of the most prestigious global UC solution providers in the market while maintaining our strong independent and interoperable product offerings is a positive step for our customers and our channel,” said Hardy Myers, President & CEO of AVST.  “We are also very excited to integrate the Active Voice team and its products into AVST, thereby enabling us to extend our global reach and accelerate our position in the UC market.” 

“AVST has been a technology and distribution partner of NEC for many years,” said Ram Menghani, General Manager, Product Management for NEC Corporation of America.  “The expanded technology relationship and the corresponding acquisition of Active Voice announced today, reflects our strong mutual commitment to our customers and expanding NEC’s global position in the UC market.  We believe that this relationship will help accelerate the customer adoption of our mutual product offerings.”

About NEC Corporation of America
Headquartered in Irving, Texas, NEC Corporation of America is a leading provider of innovative IT, network and communications products and solutions for service carriers, Fortune 1000 and SMB businesses across multiple vertical industries, including Healthcare, Government, Education and Hospitality.  NEC Corporation of America delivers one of the industry’s broadest portfolios of technology solutions and professional services, including unified communications, wireless, voice and data, managed services, server and storage infrastructure, optical network systems, microwave radio communications and biometric security.  NEC Corporation of America is a wholly-owned subsidiary of NEC Corporation, a global technology leader with operations in 30 countries and more than $42 billion in revenues.  For more information, please visit www.necam.com.

© 2010 NEC Corporation of America. NEC is a registered trademark of NEC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Other product or service marks mentioned are the trademarks of their respective owners.

About AVST

Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST) is a leading developer of Unified Communications solutions with over 15 million users relying on its products and services to maximize their productivity. With three decades of innovation excellence, AVST is solely focused on delivering communications solutions that increase individual, group and enterprise productivity. Its flagship Unified Communications platform, CallXpress®, offers best in class interoperability, scalability and resiliency while delivering advanced call processing, voicemail, unified messaging, personal assistant, fax, speech and notification capabilities. With CallXpress, an organization can uniquely protect and extend its existing IT and telephony infrastructure investments — now and into the future.

Headquartered in Orange County, Calif., AVST maintains facilities in Seattle, Wash. and the United Kingdom and has remote sales offices throughout the United States. AVST's Unified Communications solutions are sold and supported internationally by an extensive network of resellers and OEM partners. For more information contact Denny Michael, Vice President of Marketing, at 949-699-2300 or access the company's website at www.avst.com.

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AVST Showcases CallXpress 8 at VoiceCon Orlando

Demonstrates Powerful Unified Communications Solution; Highlights Interoperability, Productivity and Resiliency

ORLANDO, Fla., March 22, 2010 – This week at VoiceCon® Orlando 2010, Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST), a leading developer of communications solutions, will be showcasing its flagship Unified Communications (UC) platform, CallXpress® 8.  AVST can be located in booth #737 on the show floor at the Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center. In addition, AVST Chief Technology Officer, Tom Minifie, is participating in a VoiceCon breakout session titled, “How Much Voice Mail Do You Really Need?” on Wednesday, March 24th at 8:00 AM.

VoiceCon Orlando 2010 is focused on using communications to transform the enterprise.  As enterprises build their next generation IP telephony solution, they find themselves turning to a new set of applications that increase user and business productivity. One such application is AVST’s CallXpress.  For nearly three decades, CallXpress has been transforming productivity through applications like call processing, voicemail, unified messaging, personal assistant, fax, speech, and notification, while integrating into the organization’s existing and future infrastructure.  CallXpress enables organizations of all sizes to facilitate their enterprise migration from legacy TDM call processing and voicemail to IP-enabled UC, while delivering the interoperability, feature depth and resiliency required in a next generation solution.

“VoiceCon is an important annual event for AVST and gives us the opportunity to meet with our customers and partners to share ideas, business strategies, programs, and solutions,” said Denny Michael, AVST Vice President of Marketing.  “Our customers are here to gain valuable information that they can leverage for their business.  We always enjoy the opportunity to meet at VoiceCon and share our product roadmap and vision for the future.”

CallXpress 8 is highly interoperable. With over 250 TDM and IP integrations and the ability to support multiple switches, CallXpress aligns with the key capabilities that organizations are demanding. In addition, CallXpress allows organizations to consolidate and centralize their voicemail system to improve business efficiency while enhancing the bottom line.  With scalability up to 384 ports, CallXpress supports a centralized, distributed or mixed telephony infrastructure.

For more information about the AVST product line, please visit the company’s website at www.avst.com.

VoiceCon Breakout Session Description: How Much Voice Mail Do You Really Need?
Voice messaging systems became part of the landscape because phones need to be answered whether or not the called party was available. But with presence, IM and related Unified Communications applications and capabilities, there are new ways to assess the value voice messaging and Unified Messaging do, or don't, deliver. This session will analyze the new options becoming available, and the different ways to calculate ROI.

About AVST
Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST) is a leading developer of communications solutions with over 10 million users that rely on its products and services to maximize their productivity. With nearly 30 years of innovation excellence, AVST is focused on delivering solutions that increase user and business productivity. Its flagship Unified Communications platform, CallXpress®, offers unprecedented interoperability and delivers advanced call processing, voicemail, unified messaging, personal assistant, fax, speech and notification capabilities. With CallXpress, an organization can protect and extend its existing data and telephony infrastructure investment — now and into the future.

Headquartered in Orange County, Calif., AVST maintains facilities in Seattle, Wash. and the United Kingdom and has remote sales offices across the United States. AVST's Unified Communications solutions are sold and supported internationally by an extensive network of resellers and OEM partners. For more information contact Denny Michael, Vice President of Marketing, at 949-699-2300 or access the company's website at www.avst.com.

 

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Is Exchange 2010 a Replacement for Legacy Voicemail?

One of the great things about my job as a Technical Trainer is that I get to test drive, then use, some of the newest and coolest software packages. And, to the annoyance of my friends in the IT field, I mostly don't have to deal with the problems in deployment or the day-to-day drudgery of managing an enterprise. I guess that's a nice way of saying I understand their pain, without having to endure any of it myself.

I recently attended Exchange 2010 Ignite training. Three days of test driving the latest and greatest iteration of Microsoft's email system. It's quite an impressive product, loaded with new functionality and redesigned for unbelievable degree of robustness. While there I spent some time exploring something near and dear to my heart, their implementation of Unified Messaging (UM).  It was great to learn a bit about deploying Exchange 2010 Unified Messaging in the context of a legacy voicemail replacement - an area where I spent a considerable amount of time.

The last slide of the last lecture had a fascinating bullet point - "A  Natural Replacement for Legacy Voicemail". What you'll find while comparing a legacy voicemail to Exchange is that a lot of those "Legacy Features" such as voice distribution lists and cascading pager notifications are missing. This may not be a huge deal, since your company may not use them anyhow. However, it suffices to say that it's not a voicemail system but an implementation of voice into a more email mail centric system. It's a tradeoff -  legacy functionality for more a more modern feature set. Assuming  of course that you want those new features and can live without the legacy ones such as voice mail networking with legacy systems via VPIM or AMIS or replacing a familiar telephone user interface (TUI) with an unusual version.

Upgrading to Exchange 2010 requires a fork lift upgrade. There is no process to upgrade your existing 2003 or 2007 systems. However,  Exchange 2010 is 2003 and 2007 capable. Meaning, you can have both 2003 and 2007 systems in your Exchange 2010 enterprise. So you don't upgrade, you add the new system then move the users over . Although you can go right from 2007 to 2010 in controlled manner,  you cannot upgrade your 2007 UM though, only move those users.

One thing I found vexing in both 2007 and now again in 2010 Unified Messaging is how tedious it is to manage voice features for an Exchange user. Although the management interface has been streamlined and improved I found it tough  to go back and view or make changes once I set up a voice user. Near as I could figure, I could enable or disable UM for a user, anything else, I'd have to use a wizard again.

The last two criticisms I have deal with Speech. Speech recognition is a processor intensive function, not only on Exchange but on a CallXpress system as well. Speech also has a few subtleties that one should think about in an administration context (Hence, it makes sense to be able to make user changes easy). Take name changes for instance. What happens when "Holly Holt" gets married and now is Holly Smythe, only pronounced "Smith". What if she wants her old name, her new name, and maybe "Holly Holt-Smythe" as well? We can do this. We can also handle both Holly Smythe and Olly Smith by a few tweaks in administration. By the way, I asked that exact question in the class.

I got the reaction I probably deserved by asking such a thing at 4PM on a Friday. I'll blame it on that rather than any product deficiencies. I spent  a bit of time trying to explore this further on the web and couldn't land anywhere that described sizing, speech recognition, and disambiguation.

MS Exchange 2010 also supports Speech to Text. The caller leaves a voicemail message, and Exchange converts it to a text email. Very slick. We've had that with our "got-voice" integration for some time. We were given what I'd describe as an oblique warning that this is processor intensive and we shouldn’t give it to every user. Suffices to say, too much of a good thing here is probably a bad thing. I couldn't find much info anywhere on that either, other than everyone agreeing it was cool. I'm guessing that since I've heard that it's speech to text transcription accuracy is less than 50%, the more users added means the less likely the messages will be transcribed properly.

Not that I'm trying to be mean, these two features are very cool. There are, however, a lot of problems that pop up during speech deployment. CallXpress has the tools to deal with these issues and without making light of the complexities, they are pretty straight forward.

Make no mistake, it's a cool system with lots of other cutting edge features such as Rights Management, Exchange Online (Cloud access),  a very cool new look and feel to both Outlook and OWA, and awesome high availability and archiving capability. The way Microsoft has redesigned the architecture, with it's resulting many-fold increase in hardware efficiency, probably makes the upgrade worthwhile.

However, Unified Messaging was disappointing. With it's ability to integrate to all versions of Exchange (2010 soon to come, no doubt) CallXpress allows you to add UM capabilities as awesome and rich as these new features while at the same time providing true legacy voicemail replacement and continuity during an upgrade.

Original Post:  http://www.avst.com/blog/2010/02/is-exchange-2010-a-replacement-for-legacy-voicemail/

 

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Sharp HealthCare Selects CallXpress 8 for Centralized Communications Network

Replaces End of Life Octel^® System and Achieves High Availability

FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif., February 10, 2010 – Communications solutions innovator Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST) today announced that CallXpress^® 8 was selected by Sharp HealthCare (Sharp), San Diego’s largest and most comprehensive healthcare organization, to centralize its infrastructure.  Sharp selected CallXpress due to its ability to centralize three standalone Octel http://www.avst.com/callxpress_resource_center/voicemail/index.asp%27%20alt=%27Voicemail%20Resource%20Center%27%3E%3Cb%3Evoicemail%3C/b%3E%3C/a%3E/index.asp">voicemail systems onto a single system, while offering dual survivable call servers to protect against critical network failures.

Sharp is a not-for-profit integrated regional health care leader with more than 12 facilities including seven hospitals, two medical groups, medical clinics, urgent care centers, skilled nursing facilities as well as a variety of other community health education programs and related services.  Sharp serves more than three million people, operates 1,870 beds and has approximately 2,600 physicians on medical staffs, more than 1,000 physicians in affiliated medical groups and more than 14,000 employees.

Sharp needed to replace three Octel voicemail systems that were announced ‘end of life.’ The main objective was to identify a solution that offered centralization, thereby eliminating the required maintenance for those Octel systems, and the risk of end users being without voicemail service in the event of a critical system failure.  Sharp conducted an extensive review process with a Technical Review Committee tasked with identifying the right solution.  AVST’s CallXpress was selected in large part for its high availability and the ability to support its mixed TDM/hybrid switches and IP PBXs.

Sharp took great care to ensure the transition from Octel to CallXpress was a smooth process for end users and cites the ease of use in CallXpress as instrumental in the process. “The migration from Octel to CallXpress was one of our biggest implementations and the transition was virtually unnoticeable to our users.  They didn’t need much training since the CallXpress system mimicked the command structure of the Octel telephone user interface (TUI). On the day of the CallXpress cutover, our support staff team members were waiting for help desk calls that never came,” said Steve Cates, Sharp HealthCare Telecommunications Manager.

Today, the Sharp network has three major hub PBXs that are fully redundant and CallXpress supports nearly 4,000 voicemail users and handles approximately 495,000 calls per month.  Outside callers utilize more than 70 system-wide automated attendant menus in CallXpress that efficiently route them to the physician, hospital, department or employee they’re trying to reach.

With call volumes of this magnitude, and with physicians and hospitals relying on uninterrupted communications, CallXpress provides the high availability that Sharp demanded. Sharp now achieves high availability by utilizing a system server and two call servers. In this configuration, if either of the call servers fails, the other is able to answer and process calls, as well as record messages, without the loss of CallXpress application functionality.

Cates added, “Before CallXpress, system maintenance was a real challenge.  We had three separate systems that had to be maintained and everything had to be done after hours to ensure that physicians, staff and other essential personnel had access to voicemail during business hours.  If one system went down, we had a critical situation on our hands with no backup in place and thousands of messages that could be lost.  The CallXpress multiple call server architecture has brought us peace of mind.”

In addition to centralization, CallXpress offered Sharp HealthCare a robust platform with features that make users more accessible and mobile.  CallXpress comes with multiple mobility features, including unified messaging, personal assistant, http://www.avst.com/callxpress_resource_center/notification/index.asp%27%20alt=%27Notification%20Resource%20Center%27%3E%3Cb%3Enotification%3C/b%3E%3C/a%3E/index.asp">message notification, single number, and speech recognition for hands-free communications.

Sharp worked closely with Advanced Call Processing (ACP), a trusted partner and AVST reseller, to identify the right solution.   “We have a great deal of experience with CallXpress and understand the needs of the Sharp team,” said Rob Simpson, President of ACP.  “CallXpress is a robust solution that can support, with ease, a high call volume, centralized network like Sharp’s.  The Sharp team needed a solution that offered the next level of reliability and CallXpress was a perfect fit.”

 “CallXpress was designed to support the exact scenario that the Sharp network presented,” said Denny Michael, AVST Vice President of Marketing.  “They needed a seamless replacement of their legacy voicemail system, centralization to provide cost savings and high availability for application resiliency. We look forward to supporting Sharp HealthCare as they expand their network and deploy some of the additional functionality available in CallXpress.”

CallXpress 8 delivers a powerful suite of Unified Communications applications including advanced call processing, voicemail, unified messaging, personal assistant, fax, speech and notification capabilities to help businesses become more productive.  For more information about AVST’s products visit the company’s website at www.avst.com. 

About Sharp HealthCare
Sharp HealthCare is San Diego's most comprehensive health care delivery system. It is recognized for clinical excellence for services in cardiac, cancer and multiorgan transplantation, as well as orthopaedics, rehabilitation, behavioral health and women's health. Sharp HealthCare has been widely acclaimed for its commitment to transform the health care experience for patients, physicians and staff through an organization-wide performance improvement initiative called The Sharp Experience. The Sharp system includes four acute-care hospitals, three specialty hospitals, two affiliated medical groups and a health plan. To learn more about Sharp, visit www.sharp.com.           

About Advanced Call Processing (ACP)
Advanced Call Processing (ACP) is a comprehensive provider of telecommunications services and solutions with a customer base spread across the United States and throughout the world.  Established in 1990, ACP has enjoyed exceptional growth, while supplying customized solutions for hundreds of businesses and government agencies.    ACP has assisted hundred of companies to achieve their business goals while controlling costs through the effective deployment of communications technology.

About AVST
Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST) is a leading developer of communications solutions with over 10 million users that rely on its products and services to maximize their productivity. With nearly 30 years of innovation excellence, AVST is focused on delivering solutions that increase user and business productivity. Its flagship Unified Communications platform, CallXpress®, offers unprecedented interoperability and delivers advanced call processing, voicemail, unified messaging, personal assistant, fax, speech and notification capabilities. With CallXpress, an organization can protect and extend its existing data and telephony infrastructure investment — now and into the future.

Headquartered in Orange County, Calif., AVST maintains facilities in Seattle, Wash. and the United Kingdom and has remote sales offices across the United States. AVST's Unified Communications solutions are sold and supported internationally by an extensive network of resellers and OEM partners. For more information contact Denny Michael, Vice President of Marketing, at 949-699-2300 or access the company's website at www.avst.com.

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MVD Communications Partners with AVST

MVD Communications Partners with AVST to Sell the Company's CallXpress Unified Communications Platform

Cincinnati, Ohio, February 1, 2010 - MVD Communications, a recognized voice and data solutions provider for companies nationwide, has partnered with Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST) to provide their customers CallXpress®, an innovative Unified Communications platform. CallXpress delivers a powerful suite of applications including advanced call processing, voicemail, unified messaging, personal assistant, fax, speech, and notification capabilities to enhance the productivity of users and businesses.

"We work closely with the manufacturers we represent to ensure we are aware of the latest technologies and evaluate new products for efficiency and viability for our company and our clients," said Jeff Black, President and CEO of MVD Communications. "We are very excited to have joined the exclusive list of AVST resellers and look forward to helping our customers as they execute their technology roadmaps," said Black.

MVD is constantly adjusting its business plan to meet the demands of customers in the ever changing world of telecommunications, especially those who are ready to replace their legacy voicemail systems.  CallXpress is a leader in interoperability, integrating with more than 250 TDM, IP, and Centrex telephony switch options, therefore MVD customers can realize the benefits of next-generation enterprise communications solutions while protecting and extending their existing infrastructure.

"Companies of all sizes are actively seeking to replace their first generation communications systems with new technologies," said Denny Michael, AVST Vice President of Marketing. "MVD is a welcome addition to the network of resellers, and with their experience in this market, they are well-positioned to bring the CallXpress Unified Communications solution to customers looking to increase productivity within their organization."

About MVD Communications
With offices in Ohio, Indiana and Florida, as well as a full deployment center in Nebraska, MVD Communications has been providing nationwide service to the business community since 1992. MVD provides full-service telecommunication solutions to business customers through best-of-breed manufacturers such as Avaya, Mitel and others. Services include 24 x 7 remote monitoring and repairing of communications systems; a broad array of Maintenance Plans; Managed Services programs and Carrier Services. For additional information please visit www.mvdcommunications.com

About AVST
Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST) is a leading developer of communications solutions with over 10 million users that rely on its products and services to maximize their productivity. With nearly 30 years of innovation excellence, AVST is focused on delivering solutions that increase user and business productivity. Its flagship Unified Communications platform, CallXpress®, offers unprecedented interoperability and delivers advanced call processing, voicemail, unified messaging, personal assistant, fax, speech and notification capabilities. With CallXpress, an organization can protect and extend its existing data and telephony infrastructure investment — now and into the future.

Headquartered in Orange County, Calif., AVST maintains facilities in Seattle, Wash. and the United Kingdom and has remote sales offices across the United States. AVST's Unified Communications solutions are sold and supported internationally by an extensive network of resellers and OEM partners. For more information contact Denny Michael, Vice President of Marketing, at 949-699-2300 or access the company's website at www.avst.com.

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What the iPad Means to Unified Communications

I'll be the first to admit that making any sort of broad statement about Unified Communications based on some new whizbang gadget is a stretch. The iPad isn't a game changer. It's got that amazing Apple touchscreen and some really cool UI enhancements (have you seen the page turning graphics?), but it's essentially a more human version of a laptop. Or a more computerized version of an eReader, depending on your perspective. And like the first iteration of anything, it's got a lot of holes to fill.

But what is does say to Unified Communications is that devices are 1) continuing to converge, and 2) becoming more humane. As working minds, we weren't really tethered to office desks until the typewriter became a mainstay. Then they transformed into PCs, and now we have dockable laptops and/or separate netbooks. None of these options really fit the fluidity of a body in motion, shifting from one context/environment to another.  Smartphones come close because they've evolved into mini-PCs that are ultraportable, but you still can't get much work done on them. Even browsing a webpage can be quite a challenge on small devices.

The first time I held a friend's iPhone, my immediate reaction was, "Wow, this would be perfect if it were just a little bigger." Meaning, I wouldn't need a laptop and a cellphone any longer. I wouldn't need a physical keyboard or a separate monitor. I wouldn't need a separate zipper compartment in my backpack to carry it around. Instead, it would fit into my lifestyle without me needing to adapt to it. Just a single, slim device that could do everything: phone, apps, movies, internet, e-mail, games, music, and photos.

Okay, the iPad can't do all of that...yet. Give it a year or so. Watch its competitors launch similar devices. Watch us all start to shed the extra weight of technology and move from situation to situation without checking battery life, undocking, wrapping up cables, or even thinking about a wi-fi connection. You'll be checking your morning news and e-mail over coffee, driving to work with a Bluetooth headset, stepping into an early meeting, flipping through some family photos at lunch, giving an afternoon presentation, filing a report, stepping onto an airplane and watching a movie--all without switching devices or giving a second thought to the technology required.

So what does the iPad mean to Unified Communications? It means things are still getting simpler and more portable. Devices and applications must evolve to do both effortlessly.

Chris Sullivan is the Director of Training and Documentation for AVST and also on the CallXpress Customer Advisory Council.

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