Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

MILPITAS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 4, 2003

SpeechWorks Speech Recognition Software Added to Media Server

Enabling Natural Speech Interaction With Voice Portals,

Help Desks and Customer Support Systems

IP Unity Corp., provider of a carrier grade services platform for enhanced voice and telephony applications, today announced the availability of its Harmony6000 speech-enabled media server platform. IP Unity's Harmony6000(TM) Media Server platform provides network-based voice services to carriers and corporations. The platform utilizes OpenSpeech Recognizer(TM) speech recognition engine, the industry leading standards-based engine from SpeechWorks International, Inc. (Nasdaq:SPWX). Carriers can now offer natural voice interfaces for information services such as voice portals, help desks and customer support.

IP Unity integrated OpenSpeech Recognizer software into the Harmony6000 Media Server blade providing carriers with a highly scalable and cost-effective solution for voice recognition services. IP Unity's decomposed media server architecture makes it possible for carriers to integrate speech technology resources into their network incrementally, sharing the speech assets across multiple services. This highly dense integration of speech recognition resources into a carrier grade media server results in significant savings in both operational and capital cost of the solution. Speech recognition is a component of most "sticky" customer service channels such as voicemail, unified messaging, interactive gaming and voice portals, and carriers can deploy these services over both TDM and IP-based networks with IP Unity's versatile platform while overcoming the demanding infrastructure barriers associated with traditional host based deployment of ASR resources.

"Most of us are already accustomed to automated operator services, and we encounter more speech-enabled services every day," said Arun Sobti, chief executive officer of IP Unity. "In the next couple of years we will all be using our own voice-enabled intelligent agents residing on a carrier's network to coordinate and customize our communication with friends and colleagues. This same agent will automatically find information tailored to our interests and deliver it by phone, PDA or PC in our choice of either audio, video or text files. By porting SpeechWorks' industry-leading speech technology onto our media server platform, we've taken a major step toward making this natural interface concept a reality."

"Speech recognition technology has a proven business case. It allows carriers to not only reduce operational costs by automating calls but also allows them to converge multiple information sources and dispense that information over the most widely available terminal device - the telephone," said Piyush Modi, vice president of media processing technologies at IP Unity. "However, until now such services demanded hefty infrastructure and associated operational costs. Harmony6000 media server's unique integration of SpeechWorks' OpenSpeech Recognizer engine overcomes this barrier without sacrificing any of the ASR technology features associated with state of the art speech recognition engines."

"We continue to experience strong demand for our open, standards-based technologies and we're pleased that IP Unity has completed the integration of our OpenSpeech Recognizer software into its carrier class platform," said Steve Chambers, chief marketing officer at SpeechWorks. "IP Unity is a valued SpeechWorks' partner and will play a vital role in our continued goal to deliver a total speech solution to our enterprise and carrier customers around the world."

About SpeechWorks

Organizations around the world trust SpeechWorks to manage their customer conversations. As the leading provider of speech technologies and services, SpeechWorks helps companies create and implement unique Speech Strategies that ensure maximum financial return and the highest levels of caller satisfaction. The Company provides speech recognition, text-to-speech (TTS) and speaker verification for network and embedded environments, including new multimodal devices with both an audio interface and visual display. SpeechWorks' customers include carriers, corporations and government organizations, such as America Online, Citibank Europe, CIBC Bank, IRS, Microsoft, and United Airlines. For more information, please call 617/428-4444 or visit www.speechworks.com.

About IP Unity

Headquartered in Milpitas, CA., IP Unity delivers a carrier-grade services platform for enhanced voice and telephony applications over ATM, TDM and VoIP Networks. The company's media servers, applications servers, enhanced service applications, and application partners allow customers to quickly and cost-effectively offer new services associated with next-generation networks while protecting their investment in legacy systems. IP Unity has closed three rounds of funding with blue chip investors including Battery, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Partech International, Firsthand Funds, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, Presidio Venture (Sumitomo Corporation) and Liberty Mutual. For more information, call 408/582-1100 or visit the company website at www.ip-unity.com.

Note to Editors: OpenSpeech Recognizer is a trademark of SpeechWorks International, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.