Message Technologies, Inc. Joins Microsoft Speech Partner Program, Expands with SALT Hosting Environment.

ATLANTA -- Message Technologies, Inc. (MTI), an industry-leading provider of speech IVR hosting, services, and solutions, announced today that it has joined the Microsoft Speech Server Program as a Voice User Interface Designer (VUI), Application Developer and Hoster. As a result of joining the Speech Server Program, MTI will offer application hosting on Microsoft Speech Server (MSS) 2004 R2, which is based on the open industry standard Speech Application Language Tags (SALT). The adoption of MSS and SALT by hosters such as MTI will encourage the growth of speech recognition solutions, thus broadening industry-wide options for speech application developers.

This strategic partnership merges the functionality of the SALT hosting environment with MTI's extensive hosting infrastructure, which features best-of-breed platforms, redundancy and load balancing, virtually eliminating call failures. The combined technology of MTI's application design, development, and hosting services and the SALT hosting environment will allow MTI to offer its customers uniquely packaged and cost-effective solutions. By adding support for MSS, MTI will be able to offer a more consolidated hosting solution to developers. In addition, the MSS distinctive pricing model allows greater flexibility to smaller developers, as prices are based per processor, not per telephony port.

By offering the SALT hosting environment in conjunction with industry standard VoiceXML hosting platforms, MTI will make available to customers a range of hosting options not offered through other industry-wide hosters.

"MTI is committed to providing the most flexible hosted speech application environment to our customers," said MTI President Darrell Knight. "Adding Microsoft Speech Server to our infrastructure gives us the ability to deliver the broadest range of price and solution variants on the market today."

"By offering hosting for Microsoft Speech Server 2004 R2 and SALT applications, MTI is helping to make speech easier and more affordable for companies of all sizes and helping to drive speech technologies mainstream," said Teresa Fagan, director of Marketing for Microsoft Speech Server, Microsoft. "With the help of application hosters such as MTI, Microsoft Speech Server can offer mid-market companies even greater accessibility to speech technology solutions previously available only to larger enterprises."

Part of the Windows Server System, MSS is a Web-based, speech-enabled Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and multimodal application solutions platform. As a SALT-based platform, Speech Server follows the Web application deployment model, using an ASP.NET-based Web server as the application server.

"The adoption of Microsoft Speech Server by companies, such as Message Technologies, that host speech applications indicates the evolution trend of the speech industry," said Krithi Rao, a research analyst with Frost & Sullivan. "As the speech industry expands to incorporate different business models and increasing numbers of smaller developers enter the market, firms such as Message Technologies that offer flexible hosting options to their customers will rapidly emerge as influential players."

About MTI:

MTI (Message Technologies, Inc.) is an industry leader in providing Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and speech technologies. Its mission is to deliver innovative and affordable interactive voice solutions with maximum customer satisfaction. With over 2000 customers throughout North America and Canada, MTI specializes in speech IVR outsourcing services, including VoiceXML and SALT hosting. MTI also provides senior telephony and speech professional services for the design, development, deployment and ongoing testing of speech-enabled applications. It handles every part of the speech application infrastructure including trunk and platform provisioning, business continuation planning, monitoring, web access, physical and logical security and co-location, and live agent services. For more information about MTI, please visit its website at www.messagetech.com.