Unisys Corp says it has extended its A Series mainframe Network Applications Platform for the telecommunications industry with facsimile services, voice messaging capabilities, and hardware configurations. The box consists of A Series mainframe of any size, network interface devices, operating system and applications designed to enable phine companies to provide enhanced residential and business services. It also announced software for linking disparate voice processing systems into an integrated messaging hub with support for X400, Open Systems Interconnection and digital AMIS messaging. Applications include voice and touch-tone response for credit card or membership validation; call screening for routing 999 emergency calls; telephone service requests or call blocking through touch-tone commands and automatic routing of calls based on Caller ID. The other new features include Fax Mailbox, a Fax Overflow never busy store-and-forward facility, Inbound Fax Annotation with spoken comments, and facsimile broadcasting. The difficulty from Unisys’ point of view is the A Series: most phone companies are standardising on Unix.
