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Digium(R) and Metaphor Solutions, Inc. Announce Partnership to Offer Speech Recognition-based IVR Solutions to the Asterisk MarketHUNTSVILLE, Ala. & WELLESLEY, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Digium(R), Inc., the Asterisk(R) Company, and Metaphor Solutions, Inc., a leader in speech IVR solutions, today announced a partnership offering its On-Demand Plug & Play IVR (Interactive Voice Response) application suite for the Asterisk market. Plug & Play IVR allows Digium customers to use the web to self-configure, customize, deploy, manage and report on high quality speech recognition-based application packages in minutes. Metaphor's suite of web-configurable speech recognition applications provides businesses unprecedented access to cost-effective speech IVR solutions. Small and mid-size businesses can easily configure these speech IVR solutions to connect to their on-premise or managed Asterisk IP-PBX platforms. Speech-recognition IVR applications have been proven to increase customer satisfaction, reduce customer service cost and are preferred by callers over touch-tone applications. However, it takes a large upfront investment, specialized development skills and several months of effort to deploy a high quality speech IVR application. Metaphor Plug & Play environment lets enterprises quickly self-configure, deploy and manage high quality speech IVR customer service solutions without specialized technical expertise. Customers can use any of Metaphor IVR's 55+ pre-built applications by configuring extensions to connect to the Metaphor Asterisk peer. Digium is the creator and driving force behind Asterisk, the open source voice communications software deployed on more than 3.5 million servers worldwide to manage VoIP calls for businesses and individuals. Asterisk powers Digium's family of software and hardware appliances including AsteriskNOW(TM), Asterisk Business Edition(TM), and Switchvox(TM). "Speech recognition applications greatly enhance customer service solutions offered on the Asterisk IP PBX platform," said Jim Webster, director of technology partnerships for Digium. "Metaphor's Plug & Play Speech IVR dramatically lowers the time, cost and complexity of implementing speech IVR solutions for our small and mid-size business customers." "Digium is leading the Asterisk revolution in the PBX market. We are very excited to be working with them to help us achieve our vision of speech recognition IVR adoption for every enterprise," said M. Mobeen Khan, COO of Metaphor. "Asterisk customers with small or large call volumes can now take advantage of high quality IVR applications to increase their customer service effectiveness." Customers can run free trials and dial into live applications by visiting www.metaphorivr.com. Examples of applications include Inbound and Outbound Customer Surveys, Proactive notifications, Telephone Banking, Bill Collection, Payment by Phone, Insurance Claims Service, Order Status, Appointment Scheduling, Prescription Refill, Location Finder, Inventory, Pricing and Catalog Request. About Digium Digium(R), Inc., the Asterisk(R) Company, created, owns and is the innovative force behind Asterisk, the most widely used open source telephony software. Since its founding in 1999, Digium has grown to become the open source alternative to the traditional communication providers, with offerings that cost as much as 80 percent less than proprietary voice communication platforms. Digium makes Asterisk available to the open source community under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and uses business-class Asterisk to power a broad family of products for small, medium and large businesses. The company's product line also includes a wide range of hardware to enable resellers and customers to design their own voice over IP (VoIP) systems. This year alone, more than six billion minutes of calls will be made using Asterisk. More information is available at www.digium.com. About Metaphor Metaphor Solutions, Inc. is a leading provider of speech IVR on-demand. Through its Plug & Play website, Metaphor offers the largest portfolio of inbound and outbound packaged applications available and the fastest configuration, development, integration and management environment for speech IVR applications in the industry. Metaphor's extensive development and management tools enable the highest level of service quality for end-users. The applications are deployed on standards-based infrastructure, on-premise or in hosted environments. Metaphor markets its applications both directly and through a network of partners and resellers. Access to the Plug & Play Speech IVR website is available at www.metaphorivr.com The Digium logo, Digium, Asterisk, Asterisk Business Edition, AsteriskNOW, Asterisk Appliance and the Asterisk logo are trademarks of Digium, Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. |
