Minutes of Dealer Council Meeting with NEC – Jan. 9, 2004

1. Tom Burger indicated he was leaving for Toyko on Monday to present a plan to combine BNS and CNG. If approved, he hopes to implement this by the end of the current fiscal year (March 31, 2004)

2. Technical Issues. Jim Watson reported they have 72 techs in NTAC. He suggested each dealer make sure all of their techs get NTAC news. They should sign up on the NEC web site. Also, Jim reported that NTAC has once again got the Open Issues list back on line on the NTAC web site.

3. Doug Wonson reviewed how NEC decides where to add dealers. Census information is available at www.census.gov. They calculate potential sales using a 7 year turnover for key and a 10 year turnover for PBX. The number of businesses in an area is used, based on the number of employees. That gives market share potential.

4. Doug presented a draft of the proposed National Account program. A copy will be sent to Dealer Council members electronically to review and suggest any changes. Also, Doug reviewed plans to market ongoing software updates as well as warranty.

5. Advantage. NEC is working on having an Advantage conference this spring in Dallas (late March or early April). Probably aimed at Dealer Principals only followed up by web sales presentations for sales staff.

6. Scott Espy gave an update on Harte Hanks. The website is still up and dealers are encouraged to review their leads. There has been some follow up calls and some additional sales have resulted. Currently 39 sales, over $1,800,000 in retail value. 500 leads are still active and many will result in sales as the economy improves.

7. Scott reported that there are many product modules available on the web that are ideal for sales staff. KnowledgeSync offers many modules to teach IPK and 2000 IPS as well as the peripheral products such as ACD etc. Quizzes are available as well.

8. Gail Fisher reported on the IPK. ACD agent barge in no longer has a light indication on the phone. Also, Caller ID is now available to all phones. The new cascading CPU will let you add more stations by starting a second stack. The Megaco IP station uses the IAD card so you can add IP phones.

9. IPK Release 2.0 will include: CO message waiting (for customers that want to use voice mail from the CO; Trunk to trunk transfer with single line phones; Centralized E-911 with K-CCIS and inter-com number can expand to 7 digits for use with networks. Also, we will now be able to back up Call forwarding info using SAT. Sign up now if you have a customer that needs these features. Beta sites required before the product can be released. Release 2.5 will get the ability to upload new software for the really brave techs.

10. Ram Menghani reported on Elite mail. The original U20 (Jan. 2003) needed a patch to prevent lockups. Dealers should have installed that on those systems. The U-30 boards were released in May, 2003. A problem showed up in August with a CDLP chip. This was a date issue with small units (ports) with heavy traffic. The problem will tend to go away with time. Those units having a problem can update software. The U-30 boards will be released in Feb., 2004 with flash card option. Customers will be able to install a hard drive if they want to upgrade at a later time. The new U-40 board will be phase in during April of 2004. Both the U-30 and the U-40 will have a built in modem and a LAN connector. Future releases will have CTI lite (without fax) upgrade option for the U-30 and the U-40 platforms. The CMS will be phased out.

11. Jay Krauser reported on the 2000 IPS product. Release 8 is already released. A new 8IPLA card will provide the ability to add a few IP phones at a lower cost. Support for the 240G Inaset and the desi-less phone. E-911 notification enables 911 calls to ring on a button of a dterm phone. The user can barge into the call. Schools and motel customers will be happy with the enhanced Group Do Not Disturb Set/Reset so that we can program a group of phones to automatically go into DND mode. The new SP-30 softphone has been released. Dealers get the software for half price, plus can pay for the other half using coop funds. ACD is expanded to 100 agents for now, up to 120 in the future.

12. 2000 IPS - 3400 Series - Release 9 will expand up to 1000 IP phones, digital and analog remain at 512, the total of IP/digital/analog stations not to exceed 1000.   Release 10 will go to 1000 stations (analog/digital/IP).  We can now get a replacement CPU with existing software and the original serial number.  (Be sure to save the original disks!)  Also, dual CPU systems only need one software key as the CPU's will have the same serial number.

13. Univerge (IP based system using the 2400 software) is due to be released during March. 2400 is on R15 now, R16 probably in July. Point to Point Fusion networking. Starts with 1500 IP phones, expandable in the future to 6144 IP phones and up to 1200 TDM ports.

14. Jay and Victor talked about the voice mail from Active Voice. The AD-64 with 2.2 will add speech recognition for mailbox navigation from Nuance. Also, Unified Messaging for Lotus Notes will be forthcoming. Analog card support added in 2.2 to allow upgrade from older Repartee OS2, but beware of ISA slot limitations on current PC’s. The AD-120 will add IP integration in release 2.7.5 as well as hospital and PMS integration. The next product will be a UM-4730 with pure IP integration for IPS and IPX. The UM-4730 will be a Linux based system running IP that grows from 4-32 sessions (similar to ports).