Letter from the CEO
Letter from the CEO |
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Commetrex’ business is to develop, produce, and market business-enabling
technology products for the developer of digital-media telephony systems. Our
purpose is to help the developer to get his product to market quicker and with
less investment. Commetrex does this by providing the hard-core technologies
that are common to all multi-line integrated-media systems, eliminating the
OEM’s need to spend the millions of dollars and years of market-entry delay that
would result from in-house development. Our mission is to bring the
value-creation efficiencies that characterize the Wintel business ecosystem to the
telecommunications industry.
 Attendees search for the best and brightest new products at the Voice on the Net Show. |
 VON attendees visit Commetrex' Booth at the Spring Show in San Jose. |
Many of the finest names in telecom equipment use Commetrex’ technology to develop products such as media gateways and servers for the access network and integrated communications servers for the enterprise.
Commetrex' development lab becomes a hot spot during the integration phase
of a large product such as the recent marriage between the MSP-H8 and OTF® Kernel.
Management
Mike Coffee and Cliff Schornak founded Commetrex to bring a comprehensive telephony-middleware
platform to the enterprise and carrier OEM. Schornak serves as Chief Technical Officer while
Coffee serves as Chairman and CEO. Coffee has extensive experience in telecommunications, having
served as VP, Marketing & Sales, at NMS Communications and Innovative Technology, Inc. Schornak
has a 25-year career in communications, and is considered by many to be the industry’s foremost
authority on fax technology.
In 2006, Tom Ray joined Commetrex as EVP, Marketing & Sales. Formerly with Vocalocity, Ray
brings a wealth of experience in the speech, VoiceXML, and media-server markets.
Products
Until recently, Commetrex has focused exclusively on providing enabling-technology products to the telecom OEM, including media-processing hardware resources, media-stream software environments, media-processing technologies, and telephony middleware. However, with the launch of BladeWare™, the industry’s only host-media-processing media server to support both T.38 and G.711 pass-through fax termination, the Company has emphasized the network-based media server and the enterprise fax-server market, where it is enjoying design wins that herald a change in market leadership.
Open Telecommunications Framework® Kernel (OTF) is the industry’s only telephony middleware offered as a licensed component; OpenMedia™ is the industry’s only standards-based media-stream framework. These two products are integrated to comprise BladeWare™, the only host-media-processing system platform to offer terminating T.38 IP fax relay. Commetrex also has a comprehensive product line of signal-processing software products and digital- media telephony resource boards.
Markets
Commetrex’ software products— BladeWare™, OTF Kernel, OpenMedia, and a suite of media
technologies—are used by OEMs to develop enterprise and carrier-equipment
systems. Since the Company’s focus is on the signal processing of a call’s
media stream, these systems are at the network’s edge and the enterprise
premises. So any developer of a telecommunications product that processes a
call’s media stream is a prospective Commetrex customer. However, our strengths are primarily
in fax applications and, increasingly, in speech.
With the invention of terminating T.38 in 2001, and the introduction in 2002 of BladeWare™, the industry’s first HMP-based fax platform, Commetrex has become the go-to company for enterprise fax-server platforms and media servers for the carrier’s service network. In addition, the MSP Media Gateway hardware products, which provide media-processing and network-interface resources, allow the fax-server OEM to cover legacy TDM applications while addressing IP applications…all with the same applications and “adapters”. The MSP-H8 cuts the price of low-density V.34-based enterprise systems in half, while the MSP-640 scales to 120 ports in one PCI slot. By combining the cost effectiveness of host media processing (HMP) and low-cost PCM interfaces, such as the MSP-H8, two-thirds of he cost of fax media resources are removed from enterprise fax systems.
But Commetrex offers more than the industry’s finest fax technologies and service platforms. In 2007 Commetrex introduced its first open-source product, BladWareVXi, followed in 2008 by BladeWareStudio, the industry’s most cost-effective VMXL script-developer tool. And in 2009, these fine products will be joined by a BladeWare-based voice browser, giving the OEM a speech toolkit of unprecedented value and flexibility.
Unique Value Proposition
Commetrex’ four product categories—media-processing resource hardware,
media-stream software environments, media-processing technologies, and
telephony middleware— are embedded in every multi-line integrated-media
system. Other manufacturers offer them as part of an integrated closed-
architecture system platform that cannot be modified by the OEM. But
Commetrex offers these system elements as separate products that can be used
individually or part of an integrated platform. And, source code is licensed for
each product. This combination of modularity and source-code licensing are the
keys to “captive-technology jail” that Commetrex hands each customer.
Associations
Commetrex is a leading member of Texas Instruments’ Third-Party Developer
Network. Commetrex offers all of its media-technology products in highly
optimized versions for TI’s extensive product line. For example, Commetrex’
implementation of the G.726 waveform coder and the V.17 fax modem are the
most efficient implementations in the industry.
Commetrex and the other members of the MSP Consortium have released
for comment a draft of the Media Stream Processor (M.100) Specification.
The MSP Consortium is soliciting support for this specification from other
communications system-resource vendors that want to be involved in developing
a specification to lower the barriers to market entry for companies wishing
to develop integrated-media Open Communications system-resource boards.A copy of the specification can be obtained from the MSP Consortium’s website.
Commetrex is also a member of the VXML Forum and SIP Forum.
