James Siminoff

Why Mutare is so damn important

Today we (Ditech/PhoneTag) announced a deal with a company called Mutare (TechCrunch post about it here).  Mutare makes a system enables advanced features on things like voicemail for existing PBX’s (PBX is the phone system in the office.)

Mutare widely deployed in both big and small companies and is tightly integrated with all of the big players in the PBX market like, Avaya, Nortel, Cisco, Shoretel, etc..  In addition to a great product they have a awesome management team whom I have had the pleasure of spending some time with over the last few years.

So back to the deal.  We have integrated our automated transcription system into the Mutare server to allow enterprises for the first time to enable highly accurate voicemail transcription behind the firewall.  This means that a data and security sensitive company/government organization can now get the advantages of voicemail transcription and maintain all of the sensitive data on their site.

As one of main players and founders of the voicemail to text industry I can tell you that this is one of the most important deals ever done in this market.  Until today PhoneTag’s voicemail to text was only available in the cloud as a service.  And while this is a great solution for most customers, the really large enterprises were unable to use our services.  Their procedures are very clear about data like voicemail leaving their controlled premise.

It took us almost 4 years to have a product that was accurate and efficient enough to run on the premise.  Technology is the key to winning in the voicemail transcription market.  Our speech recognition and additional technology assets gained through the Ditech deal have made key deals like Mutare possible.

It is days like today that make all of the travel and long hours feel worth it!