FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif., March 3, 2008 – In an ongoing mission to educate enterprises on the benefits of Unified Communications, Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST) today announced that it has teamed with TMC’s Internet Telephony to deliver an educational Webinar titled, “Migrating from Legacy Voice Mail Solutions to Unified Communications."  The Webinar will take place on Tuesday, March 4, 2008 at 2:00 p.m. EST / 11:00 a.m. PST.

Today, the debate surrounding the benefits of Unified Communications (UC) platforms continues. Many organizations have multiple and potentially conflicting priorities for their infrastructure investments. Combined with what are rapidly becoming legacy voice mail systems, the issues surrounding the best way to deploy a next generation telephony solution pose many challenges. Understanding the evaluation process for selecting a UC system is a critical component to making smart investments.

Complicating this process is that fact that vendors of first generation voice mail systems are now announcing the end of support and maintenance of these products.   AVST intends to help dispel myths surrounding UC and delineate for enterprise decision-makers, key elements to look for in choosing the best-in-class UC solution for their business.

“With more than 25 years of experience in deploying communications solutions to businesses of all sizes across a wide variety of vertical markets, we understand the issues surrounding UC deployment and integration," said Denny Michael, AVST’s Vice President of Marketing. "Combined with more than 40,000 global installations, we have attained certain best practices that we can share with IT decision makers to help them make smart and informed decisions regarding a migration to a UC platform."

The Webinar, featuring industry expert speakers, will define the common elements of Unified Communications and how organizations can successfully migrate from legacy voice mail systems with minimum impact on their existing IT infrastructure.  According to Michael, “There are many misconceptions surrounding UC, and AVST will help to educate enterprises on how and why UC makes good business sense. Additionally, many enterprises are not sure how to move to the next generation of voice mail, given that many systems are now reaching end of life cycles.”

AVST’s President and CEO, Hardy Myers, will provide participants with a strategy that enables them to deliver UC solutions without having to rebuild infrastructure and requiring limited impact on users utilizing AVST’s telephone user interface emulations, resulting in minimal training. Myers will highlight a real life case study that explores how the company saved money by eliminating expensive maintenance costs for their outdated legacy voice mail system and at the same time offered users more functionality than possible with their old system. Key areas of discussion will include: 

• An understanding of Unified Communications and Unified Messaging: How they are defined and insight into the benefits and pitfalls
   
• How to best replace legacy telephony infrastructure, such as Octel^® Aria^® and Serenade^® (VMX), Mitel^® NuPoint with Centigram interface, Avaya^® INTUITY™ AUDIX^®, and Nortel^® Meridian Mail voice messaging systems
   
• How to enable companies to transition to IP telephony
   
• How to implement Unified Communications with a current telephony and data infrastructure 

The Webinar will feature industry experts Blair Pleasant, President and Principal Analyst of COMMfusion LLC and Hardy Myers, CEO of AVST.  With more than 20 years experience in the computer telephony and voice processing arenas, Pleasant brings a wealth of data and expertise on the UC and convergence issues surrounding voice and data.  Pleasant is the author of many highly acclaimed multi-client market studies and white papers, as well as custom research reports.  As CEO of AVST since 2003, Myers has helped the company’s solution, CallXpress^®, to become the premier enterprise communications platform.

To register for the "Migrating from Legacy Voice Mail Solutions to Unified Communications" Webinar, please visit: http://www.avst.com/r/tmcpr.asp.

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.