FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif., September 28, 2006 – Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST), a leading developer of communications solutions for businesses of all sizes, today announced that Charles Stevens, an industry visionary, business leader, and former Microsoft Corp. executive, has joined its Board of Directors.  With over 20 years of experience in the enterprise technology market, Stevens brings a wealth of business knowledge and acumen to an already diverse group of industry experts and visionaries on AVST’s Board of Directors.

Joining Microsoft in 1984, Stevens held a variety of senior management positions in both the sales and marketing and product development groups throughout Microsoft, with particular emphasis on supporting Microsoft’s business strategy, global expansion, and enterprise sales and marketing initiatives.

“Charles’ extensive background in developing and implementing business strategies for the enterprise solutions market fits perfectly with AVST’s vision of providing best-of-breed unified communications solutions for enterprises on a global scale through the continued expansion of our distribution and technology partnerships,” said AVST’s President & CEO Hardy Myers.  “Leveraging his impressive depth of experience and expertise, Charles’ primary mission will be to provide AVST senior management with strategic advice as well as help facilitate the growth of our relationships with key distribution and technology partners, including Microsoft.  We expect to take full advantage of his counsel and guidance as we continue to accelerate the worldwide expansion of our business over the next several years.”

Stevens most recently worked in various business start-ups in Microsoft, including the Unified Communications Group and before that the Enterprise Storage and Management Group, creating new sales and marketing strategies, including a new sales model for incubation products, comprised of OEMs, VAR channels and technical solutions professionals.

Before that, Stevens was Corporate Vice President for the Enterprise and Partner Group, where he was responsible for Microsoft’s enterprise sales and partner strategy worldwide and where he developed and implemented a new enterprise solution selling model.  In this role, Stevens also managed Global Account customers and Global Systems Integrator and ISV relationships.  Before that, Stevens managed the Business Solutions Groups and Applications Developer Customer Unit, which handled vertical industry strategy and relationships with ISVs and developers.

From 1994 to 1997, Stevens was Vice President of Microsoft’s Asia region, responsible for sales, marketing, and services for Microsoft’s products in Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, the People’s Republic of China, and Taiwan.  Under Stevens’ leadership, the region was Microsoft’s fastest-growing geographic market, with over 100% annual growth.   Prior to 1994, Stevens managed development and marketing for database products and marketing for Microsoft Office applications and Microsoft Word and e-mail products.

Before joining Microsoft, Stevens was a Product Manager for Hewlett-Packard Co. in the Office Products Division.  A native of Great Britain and a U.S. citizen, Stevens holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a bachelor’s degree in history and English from Bristol University.

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.