Press Releases

NEC and Tellme® to Offer On-Demand Voice Services

Joint offering extends the NEC UNIVERGE®360 vision to enterprise contact centers through intuitive self-service voice applications

IRVING, TX — November 11, 2008 —NEC Unified Solutions, Inc. (NEC), a leader in enterprise business communications, and Tellme®, a Microsoft subsidiary, today announced an agreement to offer on-demand, customizable enterprise-class voice services. Through the agreement, NEC leverages its expertise in enterprise voice, contact centers and communications integration to bring to market innovative voice application services running on the Tellme platform.

"As mission-critical as they are, customer contact centers pose an expensive and complex challenge for large enterprises," said Bob Crissman, General Manager of Partner Programs at Tellme. "With this alliance, businesses have a single resource to help them plan, design, implement and support world-class customer care solutions that can improve customer experience and positively impact the bottom line."

Building on NEC Corporation.s 30-year relationship with Microsoft, NEC and Tellme intend to provide end-to-end services from network planning and design through testing, tuning and ongoing customer support. NEC's Advanced Applications Services group combines extensive knowledge of interactive voice response (IVR), speech technologies and systems integration to develop intuitive voice applications that optimize live agent call handling in contact centers. NEC's deep knowledge in various vertical industries, including healthcare, hospitality, higher education and government, will also be key success factors in the relationship.

"NEC and Tellme share the philosophy that communications should serve customer needs through applications and services that are simple and intuitive based on the role of the end user. NEC calls this the UNIVERGE360 approach to unifying business communications," said Paul Lopez, General Manager, Professional Services Development, NEC Unified Solutions. "I believe that NEC's expertise, combined with Tellme.s carrier-grade on-demand platform will allow enterprises to achieve true business process integration, automate call flow and improve customer experience in the contact center."

Tellme's voice services platform, the world's largest VoiceXML platform, handles billions of calls for Fortune 100 clients every year, providing carrier-grade reliability, superior speech technologies and on-demand capacity for managing call traffic spikes, which makes it easier for enterprises to focus on their customers.

For information about NEC's solutions and services, visit www.necunified.com.

ABOUT NEC UNIFIED SOLUTIONS

NEC Unified Solutions helps companies unify their business communications through innovative software, applications, development tools, and services. NEC offers a complete portfolio for unified communications, wireless, voice, data and managed services, as well as systems integration and application development. NEC Unified Solutions serves as the North American communications integration arm of global giant NEC Corporation for Fortune 1000, as well as small to mid-sized businesses in vertical markets such as hospitality, education, government, and healthcare. For more information, visit www.necunified.com.

ABOUT TELLME NETWORKS, A MICROSOFT SUBSIDIARY

Tellme fundamentally improves how people use the phone to get the information they need every day. By combining web applications and a voice interface, Tellme's services let businesses deliver robust functionality on the phone to the consumers they serve. People simply say what they want and get it. Some of the services running on Tellme's platform include next generation customer self-service, logistics/supply chain, healthcare services, financial services and ordering for some of the largest companies in the world. Today Tellme powers billions of calls every year and is used by more than 40 million people every month. Headquartered in Mountain View, California, Tellme is a Microsoft subsidiary.

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