[May 9, 2000]

@Comm Announces Integrated Voice And Data System For Small Business

@Comm Corporation announced Town Square, a new and fully integrated business communications system, about the size of a VCR, that redefines the playing field of voice and data communications for small businesses.

Town Square introduces a new level of affordable, simple to use, enterprise-class telephone, call processing and Internet communications to millions of small businesses. This product fills the voice and data communications needs of small businesses with a one-stop solution. Small businesses will now be able to quickly acquire and apply integrated communications capabilities to their business processes in order to effectively compete with larger companies.

"@Comm has raised the bar for integrated voice and data systems for the small business market," said Brian Strachman, research analyst for Cahners In-Stat, a Scottsdale, AZ-based market research firm. "While small businesses have many of the same voice and networking needs of large corporations, they lack the financial resources and technical support staff that conventional voice and data systems require. The small business market is demanding full-featured systems that are simple, reliable and affordable."

Town Square provides an innovative class of business communications tools that enable small businesses to compete and grow in the "new economy." The compact, self-contained package can be installed in a fraction of the time and cost of traditional component-based systems such as PBXs, voice mail servers, data switches and routers. Town Square reduces technical complexity and increases productivity by making entire small business networks easily manageable over the Web without the need for dedicated in-house IT personnel.

The highly scalable open system combines a full featured PBX with rich, integrated call processing features, voice mail and auto attendant, an integrated Layer-2 Ethernet LAN switch, broadband WAN access and an embedded router.

@Comm developed Town Square to enable millions of small businesses to integrate advanced voice and data communications into their business processes. At the same time, it enables voice and data VARs to fully serve the small business market by providing complete, fully integrated communications in a single system that is easy to install, manage and support. The company already has a strong established channel of more than 350 nationwide VARs.

Town Square is designed to make it easy and profitable for VARs to tap the multi-billion dollar small business sector and deliver convergent voice and data solutions, while significantly reducing the capital investment, staffing and training needed to succeed in this market.

"@Comm has developed a system not just for small business, but also for the companies that service the small business market," said Steve Roos, vice president, marketing for Voice and Data (dot) Com, Inc., a New York-based business communications provider. "Town Square gives us a new platform that allows us to efficiently expand our service offerings by providing enterprise-level communications capabilities in a single package that is simple and affordable, and flexible enough so our customers can grow without major new capital investments."

"Town Square will revolutionize small business communications," said William H. Welling, @Comm's Chairman and CEO. "We think Town Square will profoundly change the way 3 million small and medium businesses apply integrated voice and data systems to gain a competitive edge."

@Comm, formerly Xiox Corporation, has 18 years experience in open systems, industry standard computer technology and telephony networking management solutions. The company also develops and markets a complete line of telephone management support and control systems for large corporations and the hospitality industry - among the most demanding communications markets in the enterprise segment. In addition to its nationwide network of voice and data VARs, @Comm also has distribution relationships with BellSouth and USWEST, and OEM relationships with Lucent Technologies, Mitel and Fujitsu.

@Comm's Town Square combines five major voice and data networking functions into a "one-stop" system that is designed to significantly reduce installation, system set-up, technical support and ongoing telecommunications costs associated with current multi-vendor approaches to small business voice and data networking systems. It is also designed to deliver a new level of ease of use to ensure immediate application of its capabilities in small business environments. The initial version of Town Square supports up to 40 employees and can be expanded in the future to 256 employees. Major functions include:

• PBX: Town Square provides a complete suite of PBX and telephone station features and services, including advanced voice-processing capabilities, integrated voice mail, and an auto attendant combined with speech recognition. A Virtual Telephone Client will provide easy access to voice system features. Town Square is designed to work seamlessly with analog business phones as well as future IP-based digital telephone sets.
• Call Processing: By fully integrating its programmable auto attendant, voice mail and fax routing with more than 100 calling features, Town Square provides sophisticated call processing capabilities that allow small companies to integrate the flow of their communications to match their business processes.
• LAN Services: Town Square includes an integrated Layer-2 Ethernet switch with VLAN capability and a Fast Ethernet uplink for reliable, high performance PC and server connections. WAN Access: Town Square provides an embedded router for WAN access support for a variety of service choices including ISDN, T1/E1 and DSL to provide simple to install, broadband access, combining voice and data in any proportion needed.
• Network Security: Through the use of fundamental firewalling techniques, such as stateful inspection, filtering, network address translation, port translation, static routes and various rate limiting features, Town Square is able to provide secure operations for small/medium businesses.
• E-Business Applications: Because of its open system design and universal connectivity support, Town Square provides small business with a platform for current and future e-business applications that may be locally hosted or provided through Application Service Providers (ASPs).
• Web-based Management: Despite its unprecedented number of integrated features, voice and data VARs can install Town Square quickly and easily. After installation, the simplicity continues in terms of ongoing support and system management. Non-technical small business users using the familiar point and click paradigm can add telephony and networking services through its built-in web-based administration tool or choose to have their communications system VAR manage their entire system remotely.

Because a small business' communications needs can change significantly as a business grows, Town Square was designed with an "agnostic" architecture that accommodates changing technology platforms by supporting a spectrum of connectivity, station sets, network topology and applications across an extremely flexible range. Town Square can interconnect with analog WAN or 100% IP WAN services. It supports both standard analog phone sets and IP phones. It operates as a stand-alone system or as part of a CTI server-controlled system to support advanced communication-aware applications. It also operates in single site applications as a standard feature or in multi-site, distributed networks via future software upgrades.

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