New Motorola, Unisys Agreement Expands Access to Internet

New York and Schaumburg, Ill. (PROTEXT) - Integrated Offerings from Industry Leaders to Make Development of Enhanced Voice Applications Easy. Motorola (NYSE: MOT) and Unisys (NYSE: UIS) today announced an agreement expected to significantly expand access to the Internet. This agreement proposes to allow consumers to find information and conduct transactions on the Internet using any telephone. For example, consumers could use any phone to call a travel company's specialized Web site that was created using the Unisys and Motorola technologies. The site would answer and the user could book or change reservations as if two people were having a verbal conversation. According to the agreement, Motorola will license its VoxGateway(TM) software to Unisys and Unisys will license its award-winning Natural Language (NL) Speech Assistant toolkit and runtime environment to Motorola. Both plan to distribute VoxGateway software as part of their products. "The potential for this technology is overwhelming, and is limited only by the reaches of the Internet and telephone system. Unisys NL Speech Assistant tools simplify and accelerate speech application development and delivery without requiring specialized developer skills," said Joe Yaworski, vice president and general manager of Unisys Natural Language Understanding initiative. "The combination of Unisys speech technology expertise and Motorola's wireless Internet industry leadership delivers the potential to dramatically expand both the access to, and the business of, the Internet." "Motorola is very excited about the integration of the Unisys software with the VoxGateway software," said Mitesh Patel, Motorola's Internet and Connectivity Solutions Division director of mobile applications. "It will permit our VoxGateway software to support additional platforms and speech engines. The easy-to- use NL tools will encourage companies and third-party developers to create applications which will provide voice access to the Internet." The two companies plan to enhance the capabilities of Motorola's VoxGateway software and integrate it with the NL toolkit. These plans include developing an advanced NL Speech Assistant Code Builder, which is expected to automatically generate program code in VoxML(TM) programming language, a precursor to the VoiceXML standard. By reducing the need for manual coding by application developers, this will create an easy-to-use software development toolkit for third parties, which is expected to mean more programs will be written that use these technologies. The primary difference between the products will be in their marketing, with each company concentrating on its primary distribution channels. Thus, Motorola will focus on carriers and Unisys on resellers and system integrators. This should broaden the markets for both the NL toolkit and the VoxGateway software and increase the number of platforms deploying Motorola's VoxML language. Unisys and Motorola will demonstrate this exciting technological combination today at SpeechTEK at booth 146 at the New York Hilton and Towers and also at the Unisys eBusiness event today at Cipriani 42nd Street in New York City. Related Developments Underscore Marketplace Need This technology integration provides a foundation for the VoiceXML standards proposal, which will support telephony and speech access to the Internet. In March of this year, 20 leading speech, Internet and communications technology companies announced the formation of the VoiceXML Forum to develop standard access technology. Both companies are involved in defining the standards. Specifically, Unisys is leading the definition of the Natural Language interface portion of the standard. Motorola, one of the founding members of the Forum, is committed to advancing standards-based Internet solutions. About the NL Speech Assistant The Natural Language (NL) Speech Assistant is an advanced speech application development tool set. The NL Speech Assistant provides application developers not only with the tools for speech application design and creation but also for application project management, development methodology and testing. To protect their applications from speech recognizer obsolescence, the NL Speech Assistant gives developers an open tool to design and develop spoken language applications across platforms and speech recognizers. The integrated Motorola/Unisys technology package is expected to enable developers to dramatically reduce development and deployment time of speech-based applications. Unisys has a complete reseller program for the NL Speech Assistant, including platform integration, marketing and sales support, technical support and training. Visit http://www.marketplace.unisys.com/nlu for more information. About VoxGateway VoxGateway software, part of Motorola's Mobile Internet Exchange(TM) (also known as the MIX(TM) communications platform), is a server product, which runs applications, developed in the VoxML(TM) programming language. Motorola also licenses an OEM version of the VoxGateway software to technology partners. They add value to Motorola's core technology by creating innovative products, systems and applications enabling voice access to Internet. The Motorola VoxGateway software will support applications written using the Unisys tools, Motorola's VoxML language and in the emerging VoiceXML specification. About Motorola Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT) is a global leader in providing integrated communications solutions and embedded electronic solutions. Sales in 1998 were $29.4 billion. Additional information is available at http://www.motorola.com . About Unisys Unisys is 35,000 employees helping customers in 100 countries apply information technology to solve their business problems. Unisys solutions are based on a broad portfolio of global information services including electronic business, systems integration including custom and "repeatable" application solutions, outsourcing, Microsoft Windows NT services, network services, and multivendor maintenance and support, coupled with enterprise-class servers and associated middleware, software and storage. Repeatable solutions are focused on key vertical markets including financial services, transportation, telecommunications, government, publishing, and other commercial markets. The company is headquartered in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, in the Greater Philadelphia area. For more information on the company, access the Unisys home page on the World Wide Web at http://www.unisys.com . Investor information can be found at http://www.unisys.com/investor . Unisys is a registered trademark and NL Speech Assistant and NL Enabled are trademarks of Unisys Corporation. Motorola is a registered trademark and Mobile Internet Exchange, MIX, VoxML, and VoxGateway are trademarks of Motorola, Inc. All other brands and products referenced herein are acknowledged to be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. For more information contact: Oliver L. Picher of Unisys, 215- 986-5367, Oliver.Picher@unisys.com; Andrew Fingerman of BSMG Worldwide, 212-445-8214, afinger@bsmg.com, for Unisys; Julie Roth of Motorola, 847-732-1499, roth@icsd.mot.com, Natalie Link of Motorola, Europe, 44-1256-790-707, Natalie.Line@motorola.com, Mauricio Bendeck of Motorola, Latin America, 954-267-5412, Mauricio.benedeck@motorola.com, or Steven Lyons of Motorola, Asia, 852-296-6300, Steven_Lyons@email.mot.com ots Original Text Service: Motorola Internet: http://www.newsaktuell.de Contact: Oliver L. Picher of Unisys, (USA) 215-986-5367, Oliver.Picher@unisys.com; Andrew Fingerman of BSMG Worldwide, (USA) 212-445-8214, afinger@bsmg.com, for Unisys; Julie Roth of Motorola, (USA) 847-732-1499, roth@icsd.mot.com, Natalie Link of Motorola, Europe, 44-1256-790-707, Natalie.Line@motorola.com, Mauricio Bendeck of Motorola, Latin America, 954-267-5412, Mauricio.benedeck@motorola.com, or Steven Lyons of Motorola, Asia, 852-296-6300, Steven_Lyons@email.mot.com Web site: http://www.unisys.com/investor Web site: http://www.motorola.com Web site: http://www.mot.com Subscribers please note that material bearing the slug "PROTEXT" is not part of CTK's news service and is not to be published under the "CTK" slug. Protext is a commercial service providing distribution of press releases from clients, who are identified in the text of Protext reports and who bear full responsibility for their contents. PROTEXT