AVST Showcases Its Skype for Business UC Applications at Microsoft Ignite

CHICAGO, IL--(Marketwired - May 4, 2015) - As thousands of visitors descend on Chicago this week for the inaugural Microsoft Ignite Conference at McCormick Place, 10+ year Microsoft Partner Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST) will be on hand showcasing a full suite of enterprise-class Unified Communications (UC) applications to enhance Skype for Business (formerly Lync). AVST's CX-E UC applications have recently completed Microsoft Platform Ready testing and tekVizion verification.

For businesses looking to deploy Skype for Business as a full or partial PBX replacement, AVST offers the following essential communications applications all built to enrich Skype for Business deployments:

• Automated Attendant for Skype for Business
• IVR for Skype for Business
• Voicemail for Skype for Business
• Call Center for Skype for Business
• Fax for Skype for Business
• Personal Assistant for Skype for Business

When evaluating the total cost of ownership for a full or partial PBX replacement with Skype for Business, there are important considerations. For example, leading industry analyst firm Gartner recommends that when retiring legacy PBX systems, administrators should "Plan for independence between PBX infrastructure and communications applications to support a smoother and more controlled PBX retirement plan."¹ AVST's UC applications are PBX independent, integrating with all the leading call control vendors, which enables CIOs and IT leaders to future-proof their rapidly changing PBX environments.

To support the dynamic needs of Skype for Business deployments, AVST leverages three decades of experience and leadership in call handling with its front-end speech automated attendant, IVR and voicemail solutions. Call processing menus are customizable by department, time of day, day of week, and more. In addition, AVST offers the first enterprise-class independent voicemail solution for Skype for Business. This is important for customers who want to keep voicemail messages out of Microsoft Exchange in order to support different retention policies for voicemail and email. To meet customer privacy requirements, AVST enables confidentiality of voice messages, when required, by restricting forwarding of voicemails outside of a company.