RICHARDSON, Texas--March 7, 2005--tekVizion(TM) PVS, Inc., the new standard for systems integration, announced today it has established the first independent test lab, tekVizion Labs(TM), to offer third-party interoperability testing and certification of products and services for the exploding market in voice over IP (VoIP) communications.

tekVizion Labs offers several types of testing services involving both remote and on-site testing. Remote testing can be used for pre-certification or ad-hoc test scenarios, whereas formal certification is conducted on-site at tekVizion Labs. Certification can be provided between two products or in a multi-product solution. All lab services are available to both vendors and service providers.

Jerry Mistrot has been named program director for tekVizion Labs. Prior to joining tekVizion, Mistrot played a prominent role in the founding of two of the most well-known and successful partner interoperability programs in the industry: the INIP Powered(SM) program and lab, and the Sonus Open Service Partner Alliance(SM) (OSPA). Several other tekVizion executives and engineers were instrumental in those programs as well. Leveraging this extensive interoperability test experience and hands-on expertise with more than 150 next-generation products, combined with tekVizion's experience integrating and testing multi-vendor solutions for service providers, tekVizion is able to streamline the process leading to successful and repeatable product certification testing.

"Interoperability issues continue to be one of the largest pain points for service providers migrating to a packet infrastructure," said Danny Klein, Yankee Group senior analyst, communications network infrastructure. "Many service providers find it valuable to outsource much of this expertise. Although especially true for Tier 2 and 3 operators, incumbent service providers have also turned to outside firms to assist them with their testing needs."

VoIP product vendors can also leverage the services of an independent lab. "As Sylantro continues to be the top choice of service providers throughout the world as the foundation for their IP Centrex and consumer broadband voice offerings, tekVizion's services can be utilized to provide interoperability with new unique devices, resulting in reduced time to market for deployment," said Jack Sorci, vice president of business development at Sylantro Systems Corporation.

"With the market for VoIP products and services accelerating at such a rapid rate, vendors are facing overwhelming demand for interoperability testing," said Terri Griffin, president of tekVizion. "Now vendors can leverage tekVizion Labs as an extension of their own interoperability programs, which will both reduce the time and costs associated with expanding their labs as well as accelerating deployments. tekVizion Labs can also help them keep up with the demand for re-testing between two products or multi-product solutions when new versions of software are released." tekVizion Labs will offer certification and testing for many types of products and protocols. Some of the products to be tested include softswitches, IP Centrex, unified messaging and conferencing applications, media gateways, media servers, session border controllers, application servers, Parlay gateways, and endpoints including IADs, phones and softphones. Protocols include SIP, MGCP, SCCP, H.323, as well as Parlay and ParlayX.

Product vendors may elect to become a Premier Tenant of tekVizion Labs. Premier Tenants are vendors that leave some or all of their products in the Labs to allow other vendors and service providers to test or contract tekVizion Labs to perform product interoperability or solution testing using the Premier Tenant's product. Premier Tenant status significantly enhances customers' test capacity by turning tekVizion Labs into an extension of their own test facilities. Premier Tenant status also speeds up test turnaround time and bestows priority for interoperability testing.

"Independent, third-party interoperability testing accelerates time-to-market, and being able to develop and sell converged services quickly is the name of the survival game for service providers," said Deb Mielke, president of Treillage Network Strategies, Inc. "Expanded interoperability increases service providers' choices among VoIP products and vastly improves the reliability of multi-vendor VoIP networks. Third-party interoperability testing also provides capital and operational savings over in-house testing."

"Today's networks are more complex then ever before, presenting increasing challenges for network operators as they strive to deploy new services, build subscriber loyalty and reach new markets," said Paul Shaneck, VP of sales and business development at Leapstone. "At Leapstone we are helping service providers streamline and accelerate service delivery over multi-vendor networks through our innovative CCE serviceBROKER and CCE contentMANAGER. Interoperability testing is a vital part of this. By providing these testing services, tekVizion Labs fills a void in the industry which helps us all advance the rollout of new services."