Mark Bannon, Vice President of Global Sales & Technical Services, Phonetic Systems; and Tim Walsh, Vice President of Sales, Wildfire Communications

Q Can you please give us some background on Phonetic Systems and Wildfire Communications?

A Phonetic Systems delivers real-time speech recognition solutions that provide voice access to business-critical information, people, applications and services. The company's patented Voice Search Engine (VSE) is different from traditional speech recognition and is designed specifically for voice searching extremely large directories or any size database with highly dynamic and untuned datasets of information. The VSE is standards-based and can provide a variety of stand alone applications or it can be integrated into any platform or environment to deliver robust applications like speech-enabled Directory Assistance for carriers, voice access to CRM databases, self service password reset, voice enabled email readers, auto attendants and more.

Wildfire Communications Inc., is a pioneer in the field of Virtual Assistant technology. The company develops and markets the Wildfire® suite of products offered to corporate enterprises and telecommunications companies. Wildfire's mission is to "humanize" technology to enhance the connectivity between people, and between people and information whenever, wherever and however they want.

Q What prompted the partnership between Phonetic and Wildfire?

A Mark Bannon: We were first introduced to the concept through a joint customer/prospect. After some initial conversations we saw the synergy right away and pursued a more aggressive integration of the products to better service the directory and messaging markets. By combining Phonetic Systems' scalability and expertise in large directories and Wildfire's capabilities in managing mobile communications with its Virtual Assistant, the partnership will enable both companies to provide voice-activated receptionist and Virtual Assistant solutions in order to better serve the large enterprise market.

Q Can you please explain what this partnership entails?

A Tim Walsh: Both parties will jointly market each other's solutions in order to provide a complete solution to their respective customers and potential clients. The partnership will allow customers to address a wide range of applications surrounding personal assistant, unified communications, automated attendant and directory services. Both companies will work together to jointly market and sell complete solutions and, where required, integrate each other's components.

Q What does this offering bring to the enterprise? Why do it now?

A Mark Bannon: By combining both companies core strengths it will offer enterprise customers an interface to all their communications needs. Additionally, solutions for identity management, business continuity and directory services can be combined with messaging and personal assistant solutions to bring true business communications process improvements to enterprises. This facilitates connecting people with people and information in a real-time business environment. The combination of Wildfire's humanistic interface and Phonetic Systems' large and dynamic directory technology for directory and information access can provide this.

Q What are the 'synergies between products' you cite as a reason to pursue this partnership?

A Tim Walsh: Wildfire has complimentary components that Phonetic Systems can leverage, such as conferencing, voicemail and the humanistic interface, and Phonetic Systems can provide expanded voice access to large and dynamic directories that Wildfire had limits on regarding size.

Q Has any customer deployed the joint offering? If so, please describe the offering.

A Tim Walsh: We have several potential customers that are currently evaluating the joint solution.

Q What types of deployments will this partnership improve upon from the current capabilities of each company?

A Mark Bannon: From Phonetic Systems' view it will allow access to providing the next generation of enhanced messaging solutions to its customer base and Wildfire will now be able to offer complete directory service-based solutions to any size organization or service provider.

Q Is this partnership focused on North American clients or a global partnership?

A Mark Bannon and Tim Walsh: The partnership will have a global focus.