Migrating Your Legacy Voice-mail System Script

Slide 1 - Migrating Your Legacy Voice-mail System Script

Good afternoon everybody. Thank you for joining us this afternoon for our session on migrating your legacy voice-mail solution to unified communications.

Slide 2 - Migrating Your Legacy Voice-mail System Script

Just taking a look at where we will be going today. First a quick view about AVST, who we are, where we come from, look at who has chosen AVST to do business with, and we'll take a look at a lot as we evaluate the marketplace out there. We hear a lot of things from people that are evaluating/replacing their legacy first generation platforms and we'll talk to you a little about things they've brought to our attention as concerns that they have in that replacement effort. First we'll introduce our product CallXpress to you and give some moderate detail over CallXpress, hopefully see how it can, hopefully, impact you environment, and, as we mentioned, we will do a question and answer period at the end. So off we go.

Slide 3 - Migrating Your Legacy Voice-mail System Script

AVST is applied voice and speech technologies. We've been around for a long time. We were one of the first voice-mail manufacturers over 26 years ago. We've had a very strong presence in the market place as you can see with more than 48,000 systems sold worldwide. One of the ways that many organizations, rather than just listening to the manufacturer's pitch of their product, really go into some of the independent consulting firms and evaluators in this technology, firms like Frost and Sullivan and Gartner. As you go and take a look at what they say, taking an independent look at the marketplace, you will find AVST's CallXpress at the top of the list in virtually all of the unified messaging/ unified communication categories.

Slide 4 - Migrating Your Legacy Voice-mail System Script

We've had a leading position in that and a very, very strong evaluation by those organizations, as AVST being really the premier platform as a replacement for first generation systems.

Slide 5 - Migrating Your Legacy Voice-mail System Script

Here's a quick snapshot of just a handful of our customers that have chosen CallXpress as their replacement platform. As you can see there are many very, very recognizable names here; names that are very easily recognizable. Here are just a couple of comments from some of these customers such as Del Monte foods.

Slide 6 - Migrating Your Legacy Voice-mail System Script

They had two Octel systems. They actually had a whole network of Octel systems and other systems around the country, and saved a lot of money on the maintenance of those systems with replacing them with a number of CallXpress systems networked together.

Slide 7 - Migrating Your Legacy Voice-mail System Script

Pepsi America, as well. Not only did they save money upfront by not having to retrain all of their users and make the transition very easy with their users (not having to retrain them, learn a new telephone interface) but also the total cost of ownership of the system (the ongoing cost associated with maintaining a system). They saved a tremendous amount of money and time in doing that in the managing of mailboxes and the attributes of the system. We've had a very strong track record of replacing first generation products. \

Slide 8 - Migrating Your Legacy Voice-mail System Script

Octel customers, a quick snapshot of some of them. You see companies like John Hopkins University and Hospital, University of Maryland in Baltimore, and a number of very high name recognition systems for Octel.

Slide 9 - Migrating Your Legacy Voice-mail System Script

For Centigram it's the same way.

Slide 10 - Migrating Your Legacy Voice-mail System Script

And meridian mail, one of our newest telephone interfaces to add, had a very strong showing out at the University of California Los Angeles. So as you can see, many customers have taken a look at their options. Frankly, what we've found is over the years is the closer a customer looks at their options for replacing that legacy first generation voice-mail platform, the deeper they look at it from the architectural, functional, and flexibility standpoint. Frankly, the better chance we have of winning that business.

Slide 11 - Migrating Your Legacy Voice-mail System Script

So the key concerns as we talk to many customers, some of the things that they're looking for, are something that is very easy for their employees to use. One of the things customers don't want to have to, enterprises don't want to have to do, is mass retraining of their users. And voice-mail is such a mission critical application in many enterprises today. Having to interrupt the workflow of the users in order to learn a new system can be a very negative impact from a productivity standpoint. So, having a system that allows the users to just continue on doing their business as they have before while being able to take advantage of many of the new features without extensive relearning is a very important aspect of the equation to many customers out there looking to replace those first generation platforms. Integrating it in the existing network. One of the things the older systems never had to worry about; they were closed proprietary systems (the Octels and the Centigrams). They rarely touched the network. Most of them never touched the data network and the rest of the environment. Now the newer generation systems really do touch the network and have extensive integrations into the rest of the enterprise environment. The ability to do that without having a negative impact on that environment is a very important aspect to the customers that are on this path today. Obviously cost, especially today through the economic turmoil's we face as a nation, is an ever increasing concern for many organizations and also for a system that does not lock you into one direction/ one platform. Something that can easily adapt as the changes and the needs of the organization change is very important. You don't want to be locked into one particular thing whatever it is. You want something that is going to allow you to change and have the flexibility to move in the direction that is required by the business that you're in without having to worry about if this back end system is going to be able to accommodate that.

Slide 12 - Migrating Your Legacy Voice-mail System Script

Why are we in this boat? We've had many of these systems for years and years and years and why do we really need to replace them? Well, they're very reliable systems. Many customers plug in their Octel system or their Avaya intuity system or meridian mail system and they just don't have problems with them. They have been working for years (many for decades or more) and just haven't had any problems with those systems. Unfortunately, all of the manufacturers of these systems have end of lifed those products. And they're really coming up quickly to an end of support situation. Most enterprises today have policies that require them not to have systems that are not supported by the manufacturer within their environment. So this end of life/ end of support situation is a very, very important thing especially as we're getting close to those dates, now, from these manufacturers. Now the replacement that the manufacturers from Octel, centigram and those types of Meridian mail systems, they're really, when it comes to the scope of things, brand new products. Many of them have only been made available for the last couple of years. Maybe 5, 6, 7 years or so. Many of them have significant shortcomings from a feature functionality standpoint. Most of them have spent the first few years of their existence just adding back into the systems the features that the legacy platforms have had for years and years if not decades. Most of them require changes or adaptations of the customer's environment, of you environment, to even accommodate those systems. It's not just the plug and play anymore, these applications touch many things in the environment and requiring adaptations of the rest of your environment to accommodate the system has been a real concern for many customers. Then there is the architecture that they have. Many of the replacements from those manufacturers really lock you into one way of doing things. Be it Unified Messaging or from a PBX telephony stand point (or whatever it happens to be), you're going to be locked into, often times, one way of doing things when the needs of the business really require a system that can be flexible and move in different directions based on the needs of the business. We have found that there is really a need for a product that not only can provide the reliability that you're used to with your existing voice-mail system and can have the features and capabilities that you need. You don't want to install a new system and have that Monday morning event where you though as carefully as you can about all the functionality that you need. But, then you cut the system over and Monday morning shows up and you get inundated with calls about what happened to this feature, what happened to that feature. You really need a system that has a depth of features that are required by your customers without having a significant negative impact into your environment. That's what we hope to show you today that we're able to provide with CallXpress. So right now we'd like to take a quick poll of the audience if we can bring that up here. As you can see, what percent of your end-users are supported by legacy voice-mail systems that are coming up closely to end of support? So if you could go ahead and vote now on that… we'll take a few seconds for people to enter that information. OK, so let's take a look at the results from the poll. There we go. So there is a pretty significant number of folks there, better than three quarters of the people, that are on this today that are looking at systems that are coming up to end of support/ end of life. You can identify that there is a very strong need for what we're talking about today. Let's continue on with the discussion here.

Slide 13 - Migrating Your Legacy Voice-mail System Script

CallXpress is the name of our product. It is pretty unique in the industry; it has a very unique position. In that, it has been available/ around since the early 80's. Back then in the early 80's, those of you that are like me can remember back in the telephony world, back in the early 80's… it's hard to believe that 1980 was almost 30 years ago from now. The thing about all of telephony back then was everything was very closed and proprietary. There was nothing that touched the systems externally and the systems didn't touch anything on the external side of the equation. We really kind of broke the mold then. We developed CallXpress exclusively around industry standard hardware and software components. We were a PC based system at the time; there was nothing closed or proprietary about the system at that time. That put us in a very unique position in that over the years we've been able to rewrite the application numerous times to take advantage of newer operating systems, newer applications, and things like that but we've never had to start over. We've talked about all of the legacy systems and how they got to a point where they could not adapt and reach into the rest of the environment and had to be replaced by new systems. We've never had to do that. In the 26 year history of the product we've never discontinued a feature of the product we have never discontinued a feature of CallXpress with the history of the product. So with the continually developing of the system and never discontinuing standard feature, what that gives you architecturally is a state of the art system with more than 26 years of feature development on there. And that really is a comment that no other manufacturer can give you today. Everybody else's system really is really no more than about 5, 6, 7 years old. We're more than 26 years around but have been continually developed to take advantage of the newer applications. We are environmentally agnostic and what that means, and we'll drill down in this a little bit as we go through this, is it doesn't matter what your environment looks like today or in the future, CallXpress is uniquely positioned to accommodate what your environment looks like and what your needs are. The feature set is very broad and deep. Many current systems boast about the fact that they have a lot of features and you can do almost anything with them. But many of them are, rather than being a system, a fully developed system, really a toolbox that allows you to develop those applications as you need them with custom programming. That's not required on CallXpress for the most part. You can really customize it to meet your needs without requiring extensive customizations.

Slide 14 - Migrating Your Legacy Voice-mail System Script

We feel that CallXpress really is that ideal legacy replacement for a number of very strong reasons. First is the telephone user interfaces. The buttons that you push when you access your mailbox to play messages, delete them, foreword them, ect. We emulate those telephone users' interfaces from many legacy systems as you can see listed there. Ours are the most accurate emulations that are available. Many of our competitors also provide emulations of legacy products but what happens often times is they go a couple of layers deep for message management but after you get passed those first couple of layers, the key strokes will change significantly from what your used to on your legacy platform. When it comes to the message management interface, the key strokes are identical to what you use today from top to bottom. This really makes that transition easy. The users will be hearing a new voice but the buttons that they push are going to be the same whether it's the addressing of a message, listening to messages, saving, deleting, forwarding, whatever that happens to be. Over the last 10-15 years, there have been a lot of changes in many enterprises (acquisitions, mergers) and what happens is you end up with a mix of voice-mail systems around and often the ability of a system to fit into that network with CallXpress is very powerful. We can fit into virtually any type of a voice-mail network transparently to the users so as you are looking to replace multiple voice-mail systems in a large network, you can do that with CallXpress and have it be relatively transparent to the rest of the users within the network until such time as they come ready to make that migration. Another unique feature of CallXpress that is very different from the rest of the industry is how CallXpress is licensed. Licensing often equates to cost. Bottom line, cost. Every system out there has some licensing associated with the number of ports that you have (the connections between the voice-mail system and the PBX) But the primary licensing on virtually every other system out there is the number of mailboxes. So if you buy a system that's licensed for 500 mailboxes and you hire your 501st employee, you have to sit down and write another check. That will never happen with CallXpress. With CallXpress, you can have one mailbox or 10,000 on any system. There is no difference in cost. And the way to drive this point home to you is, think back… take a moment to think back, when was the last time you added new ports to your existing voice-mail system. Probably there is a lot of blank looks on people's faces all around the country right now trying to remember when the last time they added ports to their voice-mail system. Many of you have never added ports to your voice-mail system. But if I turned that question around and asked when was the last time you added a new mailbox to your system most of you would say “oh, we added three mailboxes this morning for new employees that have come on”. A system that is licensed primarily per port, not per mailbox, gives you a tremendous amount of freedom and a tremendous amount of cost savings over the life of the system. And then again, that whole legacy feature set. Those Monday morning features. We have a very broad range of features available to you. All the basic features are covered and even, as you can see here, a number of new and unique features that you'll find on CallXpress and really nowhere else. So those Monday morning telephone calls will be significantly minimized with CallXpress as opposed to really any other system that's available today. Automated attendant or call processing applications is one of the things that is very important to many organizations. And it's one of those things that sometimes can even be overlooked as you get started looking at replacing your legacy voice-mail systems. There are often times many, many automated attendant call processing menus that have been built over the years and are in use even yet today. We provide full automated attendant as a standard feature of the system with unlimited menus. Many competitive solutions have limits to the number of automated attendant call processing menus that you can even build. We have no limit to that, no fixed limit to that. You can create as many as are necessary. Extensive find me/ follow me capabilities. A number of those find me/ follow me capabilities are standard features of CallXpress and then there are some that can be enhanced with some additional/ option modules to enhance that find me/ follow me. The real key to that is getting the incoming calls connected to the person that is appropriate to assist that caller with whatever their need may be and those are some of the features that are included in CallXpress as standard features and even some enhanced capabilities as optional features. We have a full functioned, full feature IVR module, fully integrated to the rest of CallXpress. That requiring separate server with its own telephony connections to the PBX. This is a fully integrated module of CallXpress. So callers can be coming in and doing standard automated attendant menus, doing voice-mail transactions, and IVR transactions all within the same call. Now one of the things that we find on the legacy systems that we talked about is the assurance of service. Those legacy systems, they were just solid. They worked and worked and worked. Allot of that had to do with the fact that they did not touch the external environment. So anything that was going on the data network and in the e-mail environment really didn't impact these legacy systems because they really had no integration into them. Many newer systems, though, have direct dependencies on external directories. Maybe they require connection to an LDAP directory or an active directory for the voice-mail systems main directory service. Maybe they rely on the e-mail system for the message store, that's where messages have to be stored, and you have to maintain connection to those. Often times what happens is if there is any trouble or any problems within the environment that impact the voice-mail server's ability to connect to those external facilities, the functionality is significantly impacted. That's not true with CallXpress you can, as a matter of fact, walk up to the back of a CallXpress server, and unplug the network cable and the system will continue to fully function in and of itself across with any network domain structure even across network domain structures. We have support for your existing virus scanning package and for your backup strategy. CallXpress operates on a standard windows 2003 server as do most newer voice-mail systems. The high priority security patches, as issued by Microsoft, can be applied to the server based on your internal IT policies and requirements, not waiting for specific approvals from AVST. CallXpress really just becomes another application server within your network. It's not a one off, you do not have to make special requirements and policies for CallXpress. We accommodate your existing policies and procedures. Moving on to talk about unified messaging. One of the things that happens is as people are looking at newer systems unified messaging is usually very high on the priority list to take a look at.

Every manufacturer is going to come in and show you a screen that looks like this. This is an outlook screen; they could show you a lotus note screen if you're a lotus notes environment or a GroupWise screen. But they all look pretty much the same. Showing the voice, fax, and e-mail messages all appearing in the inbox and accessible through this one, individual client. And if you look at four to five of those, the impression can be that everybody pretty much does the same thing and that really doesn't matter. Well that's not really accurate. The back end architecture is really key to take a look at. What happens within the outlook client can be very similar but what happens on the back end and the ways to access messages from other types of devices can be significantly impacted based on the architecture of the system. And if you look carefully, there are about four different architectures for implementing of unified messaging. There is server based. And everyone does unified messaging in one of these four ways. No one does anything from these four ways from an architectural standpoint. There is server based. Server based means when the voice-mail message comes into the voice-mail server, it is moved off the voice-mail server and placed on the e-mail server. This is the most feature rich way to do it. You are piggy-backing on all of the capabilities of the e-mail system from an archiving standpoint, indexing of it, accessibility. If you're an exchange environment you've got a dozen different ways to get to your e-mail messages. Voice-mail messages are not accessible in all those ways via outlook we access, a Smartphone, a blackberry, whatever that happens to be. But it's also the most invasive into your environment. There is more network traffic with server based unified messaging. There can be some regulatory or compliance issues from discovery and things like that. Storage implication on the e-mail server all is encountered with that. Client based unified messaging is another method of doing it from the back end architectural standpoint. In this method the voice-mail messages are never moved over to the e-mail server. The e-mail server generally doesn't even know you're doing unified messaging. What you do is you go to the clients desktop and you program their e-mail client to address another mail store, another mail account is created on that e-mail client, and that's your voice-mail message mailbox on the voice-mail system. There's very low impact on the environment, it's an IMAP with virtually all manufactures that use this, and they utilize standard IMAP technology to get this done. But messages are less accessible with this method. For example if you have users that regularly use outlook web access, smart phones or domino web access to get to their e-mail messages; they will never see their voice messages on any of those interfaces because the voice-mail messages don't live on the e-mail server they live on the voice-mail server. You can have just the flipside of all of those regulatory and compliance issues of indexing of messages, discoverability of messages, and things like that. It's just the opposite questions and concerns that you have with the server based model. There's also kind of a hybrid method of doing unified messaging and this is where a notification e-mail is sent over to the user's inbox with a link and when they click that link it opens up access to that message from a separate interface. The voice-mail message doesn't live on the e-mail server, just a notification message with that link. Now this is a nice way to do it but it's not really unified there are separate clients for voice-mail and for e-mail messages so there's no real true unification here. It's kind of a hybrid of those unified models. And then there's a simplified unified messaging and this takes that notification e-mail and not only sends that over there but instead of having a link in it to gain access to the message, it includes a non synchronized copy of that voice message. But, now you have to handle messages twice, every message has to be handled twice. Once over the e-mail client and once over the telephone. So the interesting thing about it is other manufacturers will lock you into a single architecture of doing unified messaging. You'll be forced to do server based unified messaging or client based unified messaging. They don't support doing both clients based and server based or just hybrid and server based. And some manufacturers support multiple methods but you have to lock into one method at a time. And to change, if you go into say as a client based model and you want to do server based, it's usually a significant relicensing and significant costs and efforts associated with that type of transition. As we discussed, all of those methods have pros and cons. We've been doing unified messaging for 15 years now and we've found there's no golden bullet for unified messaging. There is no one size fits all from a corporate standpoint or even down to the individual user standpoint. CallXpress is the only system to support all four methods of unified messaging simultaneously on the same system and you change a user from one to the other with the click of a mouse. The same UM client license is used for any type of unified messaging that is there. So in a user by user basis on CallXpress and this is very unique, you can choose where messages are stored. Do you want them stored on the e-mail server, do you want to keep them on the voice-mail server still being able to do unified messaging. You can mix and match unified messaging and voice-mail and partial unified messaging; only telephone unified or just have the desktop unified. And you can mix and match these all day long. Now remember we said there is no per user licensing for voice mailboxes on CallXpress. Uniquely on CallXpress is the only time there is a requirement for a unified messaging client license is when you're accessing and managing messages from a desktop interface. Now most organizations have communities of users that are rarely sitting at their desk with their PC logged onto the network so desktop unified messaging, while it might be nice to have, doesn't give a huge bang for the buck. But being able to walk up to any telephone, pick it up and have full access to all of your messages including e-mail messages. Having them read to you over the telephone, being able to save them, delete them, foreword them, things like that, and reply to them would be a huge benefit to those users. That type of telephone only unified messaging user, there is no per user licensing on CallXpress for that type of a user. That hybrid method we talked about, on CallXpress that can be made completely secure. Many organizations are concerned with users having access to the WAV file itself and being able to take that wave file outside of the enterprise, whether it be legal issues, security issues, HIPAA requirements, getting access to the wave file and being able to remove it from the organization is a big concern. That hybrid method can be made completely secure. We call that secure unified messaging where they have full desktop and telephone access to all of their message types but the user never has possession of the actual wave file itself. We integrate to virtually any corporate e-mail environment that's available. And we have simultaneous support for multiple e-mail servers. So maybe your one of those organizations that through acquisitions and mergers or maybe you're a higher education customer where you've got multiple e-mail servers of different kinds, maybe you've got a couple of exchange servers over here, and in another location you've got some GroupWise servers, and a send mail server over here, and a couple Eudora servers someplace else. CallXpress is unique in our ability from a single system to provide full unified messaging to all of your e-mail servers without requiring multiple CallXpress systems, single CallXpress system being able to accomplish that.

Expanding the functionality even further is providing a speech interface. Our speech interface not only gives users access to their mailbox to manage their messages, it allows users to gain access to all of their mailbox commands in an exchange environment, access to your calendar and contacts (that will be extended to the lotus environment after the first of the year), and being able to place calls all through speech commands. This is really supporting those laws that are coming out of the books very strongly these days not allowing users to touch their telephones while they're driving. And then extending that even further not only just for users to be able to access their system but also for outside callers to have a full speech enabled automated attendant capability on the system. For fax applications we have an OEM arrangement with Captaris, the manufacturer of RightFax, the market leading fax server by about a 4, 5 to 1 margin to their closest competitor. Not only for unified messaging functionality but for even basic desktop faxing, inbound and outbound desktop faxing. The full RightFax engine is available. We even maintain an exclusive connector between CallXpress and RightFax that even allows you to extend faxing services to your call processing applications and a number of other types of fax capabilities from our exclusive connector that we have between CallXpress and RightFax that you won't find anywhere else, even other manufactures that also utilize RightFax and the fax server that they offer and integrate with. Message notification, this is an award winning feature of CallXpress. We are seen as having the most robust message notification features available in any system out there. Whether it be the message waiting light on your telephone, outcall notification, SMS notification, e-mail notification, alerting the users of not only new voice messages but of fax and e-mail messages. We can alert users to those. In addition to the individual users being notified of the messages, we have a module of call NotifyXpress that allows for prerecorded messages to be sent to large volumes of users for notifications. Things like appointment reminders for medical facilities, doctor's offices, and things like that. Those types of applications where you have prerecorded information that can contain some variable information as well to be able to be called out and notify large numbers of people. Having that is a fully integrated module, fully integrated with all of the rest of the applications of CallXpress, can be a very, very cost effective solution for your organizations as your evaluating the ability to notify your customers and users of important information. Administration on CallXpress, this really gets down to the total cost of ownership of the system. Once you get the system in, it can have all the features in the world but if it's a pain to be able to administer and make those features available to your users, it really doesn't make a whole lot of difference. CallXpress uses a very easy to use graphical client application that of course runs on the CallXpress server but also can be installed on any number of administrators work stations. Unlike many of those legacy systems where you can only have one administrator at a time in the system, there's no limit to the number of administrators that can simultaneously be managing the system. SNMP, if you use an SNMP management council to manage the servers of your network, CallXpress, not only the server but also the CallXpress application, can be a part of that so the help of the server and the application can be made available in those types of applications. For those of you that have multiple sites and require multiple CallXpress systems, this is a snapshot of our administration client and as you can see its been enabled to not only show a single system but also to show multiple systems, and you can see we can manage systems from all over the world providing a view of all of those systems simultaneously on the same administrative interface. Here we're looking at mailboxes on both the Dallas and the Seattle system. If a user moves from one system to another it's almost as simple as a drag and drop to take the user form one system to the other and be able to migrate them as the needs arise moving all of their mailbox attributes from system to the other including all of their greetings, notification schedules, and messages are easily moved almost as simple as a drag and drop from one system to the other. And this global administration option really allows you to manage multiple systems within your environment without having to call into on one, release from that, call into the next, release from that, or having multiple windows opened up on your desktop. We've got another polling question coming up here that we'd like to put to you. How many PBX's, or IP PBX's, does your company currently have deployed? Essentially, how many different telephone systems do you have within your particular environment? We'll take a few seconds. That can either be at one site or at multiple sites. Okay, let's take a look at the results from that. Okay, it looks like we got quite a few folks, better than 50% of the people, have 2 or more different telephone systems deployed within your environment. Okay, let's go back to the presentation, and you'll see how CallXpress can really meet those needs of multiple PBX's. We support the broadest range of telephone system integrations of any manufacturer out there. More than 250- 260 different telephone system integrations. This is from small key systems to the latest and greatest IP PBX's, hybrid systems, and Syntrex systems. Virtually any telephone system that's available, today, and most legacy voice-mail PBX systems and telephone systems, are all supported by CallXpress. We support any environment that you have whether its centralized, distributed, hybrid, or maybe you've got a standard PBX and a different manufacturer's IP PBX. CallXpress being able to support that is a very powerful solution for you. As you can see here we've got many, many hundreds of different systems we have, juts a small sampling here, of the different telephone systems that we support. Standard integrations too. IP integrations too. We can integrate multiple PBX's simultaneously. So as you, for an environment that may have different telephone systems running whether they be local or remote or you're in the process of migrating from a standard TDM based legacy PBX to an IP PBX and these can be different manufacturers. There's no reduction in the features on each integration connected to CallXpress. So say you have a Fujitsu PBX here and a Cisco call manager or a Nortel PBX Avaya IP PBX that you're migrating to, that migration can very easily be handled with CallXpress and just a couple clicks of a mouse will change a user from one PBX to the other. You have a single centralized communication database right here integrating to whatever type of PBX environment you have now or in the future.