San Jose, Spring VON 2006 Conference & Expo, California, Lod, Israel, March 13, 2006 –
AudioCodes (NASDAQ: AUDC), a leading provider of Voice over Packet (VoP) technologies and
Voice Network products, today announced that its Mediant™ and MediaPack™ SIP VoIP Gateways provides key interoperability solutions that enable Microsoft Exchange “12” Unified Messaging to connect to an enterprise’s existing voice network. Key capabilities to be delivered by Microsoft Exchange “12” — the code name for Microsoft’s next version of its leading server for e-mail, calendaring and unified messaging —include a unified communications experience for businesses of all sizes. Microsoft and AudioCodes have been working closely to develop and test the AudioCodes gateways to help ensure they will be market ready along with the Exchange “12”.
Microsoft announced its “Beta 1” program for Exchange “12” late last year, and Exchange “12” is expected to be generally available in late 2006 or early 2007.
“Organizations today are looking for solutions that will improve access to all of their communications, including e-mail, fax and voicemail,” said Donna Conner, Group Product Manager of Exchange Server at Microsoft Corp. “AudioCodes’ SIP VoIP Gateways will allow businesses to cost effectively and quickly integrate the new unified messaging feature in Exchange “12” with their existing legacy voice switching infrastructure”.
Unified messaging features in Exchange "12", built on the foundation of VoIP and SIP, deliver voice mail and faxes to the Exchange inbox where, like e-mail, they can be accessed by Outlook, Outlook Web Access, mobile devices, and any phone through Outlook Voice Access, a new and rich speechenabled access method. SIP VoIP Gateways enable Exchange connectivity with the substantial installed base of legacy enterprise voice switches (Private Branch Exchange, a.k.a PBX).
AudioCodes ensures interoperability of its SIP VoIP Gateways with leading PBXs from vendors such as Nortel, Avaya, Mitel, Alcatel, Siemens and NEC, among others.
“We are very pleased to be part of this exciting, new solution from Microsoft for the enterprise market,” said Lior Weiss, Vice President of the Media Gateway Business Line at AudioCodes, “Extending the Exchange vision by bringing new valuable content of voice and fax to the inbox will increase enterprise productivity and save administration costs by consolidating IT infrastructure. As the market begins to adopt Exchange “12” and additional Microsoft SIP-related products, AudioCodes will enable this evolution with a wide range of SIP VoIP gateways.”
The Mediant™ 2000 High density gateway and MediaPack™ Analog Gateways are SIP VoIP Gateways offered in densities ranging from 4 analog ports to 4 E1 or T1 spans, effectively supporting thousands of enterprise seats. The gateways enjoy industry leading (confirmed by ETSI) voice quality, and are designed for accurate speech recognition and ensuring toll quality voice in a geographical distributed deployment.
The Mediant and MediaPack Gateways are available through approved distributors, worldwide. Additional information is available at http://www.audiocodes.com/ChannelPartnerLocator.aspx
AudioCodes will be exhibiting at VON Spring, San Jose, California, 14-17 March 2006 at Booth
#1309.