There were many pilots, projects, and useful deployments with AT&T organizations and subsidiaries. However, three of these projects stand out.
Call Delivery Service (aka AT&T VoiceMark Messaging Service)
This was the first application to place Conversant “in the network,” although some internal AT&T organizations dismissed this as “in the network” because it was a “service” that didn’t need to meet the stringent “five 9s” reliability of the “core network.”
SDN NRA Sequence Dialing
This application did place Conversant squarely in the core AT&T voice network providing a service to some of AT&T’s largest business customers. It passed a threshold that led to other important network deployments.
Voice Recognition Call Processing (VRCP)
By the time of VRCP, Conversant was effectively the de facto programmable platform for the rapid deployment of new network features. This was not without some political friction since Conversant, originally a Network Systems creation, was now a Global Business Communications Systems product. However, when the Operator Services Position System (OSPS) development organization, a Network Systems R&D organization that was part of the large Network Systems 5ESS switch development needed to rapidly adopt ASR, it chose to partner with Conversant.