PISCATAWAY, N.J., Sept. 24, 2003 — The VoiceXML Forum announced today that it has expanded the Board of Directors and elected new officers. Representatives from Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ), Nuance (Nasdaq: NUAN), VoiceGenie Technologies, Inc. and West Corporation (Nasdaq: WSTC) will join AT&T (NYSE: T), IBM (NYSE: IBM), Lucent Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: LU) and Motorola, Inc. (NYSE:MOT) as Sponsors and will join the Board of Directors to provide overall strategic direction and leadership. Igor Jablokov of IBM succeeds Bill Dykas as chairman of the VoiceXML Forum.

The VoiceXML Forum is a four-year old industry organization chartered with establishing and promoting Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML), a technology standard essential to making Internet content and information accessible via voice and phone. With the backing and technology contributions of its diverse membership, the VoiceXML Forum is uniquely positioned to help drive the evolution of VoiceXML and accelerate market adoption for speech-enabled applications worldwide.

"We are pleased to welcome our new Sponsor members," said Igor Jablokov, newly appointed chairman of the VoiceXML Forum. "Hewlett-Packard, Nuance, VoiceGenie and West have been key contributors in the Forum since its inception, and VoiceXML is critical to their companies’ speech strategies. The decision to invite these companies to become Sponsors and their interest in assuming a leadership role, demonstrates the tremendous industry interest in the Forum and the importance of VoiceXML to the industry."

Members of the VoiceXML Board of Directors include:

  • Chairman: Igor Jablokov, IBM
  • Vice Chairman: Mark Disbrow, Lucent Technologies, Inc.
  • Treasurer: Eileen Natale, AT&T
  • Secretary: Cindy Tiritilli, IEEE-ISTO
  • Director: Mark Randolph, Motorola, Inc.
  • Director: Bruce Pollock, West Corporation
  • Director: Dan Burnett, Nuance
  • Director: Eric Jackson, VoiceGenie Technologies, Inc.
  • Director: Scott McGlashan, Hewlett-Packard

"Our research indicates that revenues from the development of voice applications will exceed $1.5 billion for hardware, software and professional services in 2007," observed Dan Miller, senior analyst at Zelos Group, and author of the recently published Roadmap Report on the Voice Application Infrastructure. "Much of this growth will be fueled by the use of IP-based platforms to extend Web-based self-service applications over the telephone. The VoiceXML Forum has played an important role in defining the standard. New Sponsors and an expanding leadership will aid the Forum in driving deployment of VoiceXML as the standard for building voice applications on open platforms rather than proprietary IVR systems."

About the VoiceXML Forum

The VoiceXML Forum is an industry organization that formed to create and promote the Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML). With the backing and contributions of its diverse membership, including key industry leaders, since its inception the VoiceXML Forum has successfully driven market acceptance of VoiceXML through a wide array of speech-enabled applications. Currently the Forum has more than 380 member companies, distributed across three membership categories (Sponsor, Promoter and Supporter). Membership in the Forum is open to any interested company.

The core activities of the VoiceXML Forum are driven by its four active committees: Education, Marketing, Tools and Conformance. The Forum publishes VoiceXML Review (http://www.voicexmlreview.org), an electronic magazine dedicated to VoiceXML, featuring insightful articles written by industry experts. Its public website (www.voicexml.org) is a rich, one-stop source for information about VoiceXML and related technologies. The VoiceXML Forum is organized as a program of the IEEE Industry Standards and Technology Organization (IEEE-ISTO).

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