IPC and Acme Packet Partner to Extend IPC's Unigy Trading Platform across the Entire Enterprise

JERSEY CITY, New Jersey, June 20, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- IPC Systems, Inc., a leading provider of voice and electronic trading communications solutions to the world's top financial services firms, today announced a strategic partnership with Acme Packet, a leader in session delivery network solutions, to extend the value of IPC's Unigy platform more broadly across the enterprise. Partnering with Acme Packet enhances IPC's SIP based Unified Trading Communications platform to deliver applications across all users in the trading workflow, regardless of the communications device being used.  With this integration, trading floors can enhance the productivity of all users in the trade workflow, increase business agility, simplify legacy IP telephony infrastructures, and better control costs. 

"IPC's Unigy is a revolutionary platform for today's trading floor, helping to extend critical communications across all offices and systems within the enterprise," said Dino Di Palma, chief operating officer, Acme Packet. "Our application enablement technology enables customers to centralize the infrastructure and management resources, putting IT managers in control of complex communications and applications architectures."

By partnering with Acme Packet IPC will have the ability to extend Unigy's native Session Management and application capabilities more broadly across an enterprise, expanding from its trading turrets to traditional telephony systems.  Unigy's applications leverage IPC's Blue Wave Application development platform, which also allows customers and third party developers to create communications-enabled applications that manage and optimize trading workflows.

"Combining Acme Packet's solution and the power of Unigy allows us to provide customers with a unique enterprise-wide solution that can help improve efficiency and reduce costs," said Mark Miller, vice president, product management for IPC. "In addition, by extending Unigy-based applications to traditional telephony such as PBXs, we can help customers have greater control over communications and, in turn, allow them to more easily comply with increasingly complex regulations governing who can talk to who within trading firms."

IPC's Unigy is the industry's first single, open standards Software Oriented Architecture (SOA) based platform for unified trading communications and applications. The key benefits Unigy offers are:

• Collaboration - simplifying and accelerating collaboration between traders and their middle and back office trade support teams so deals can get done faster
• Session Management - providing customers with the tools they need to manage communications, control access and meet compliance requirements
• Exclusive apps - enabling customers and third-parties to develop  proprietary applications, on demand, to streamline processes and gain a competitive advantage
• Management - dramatically improving communications system management, monitoring, and operations with the new Unigy Management System for greater flexibility, scalability and uptime
• Lower costs – by providing more affordable, built-in business continuity options, lower energy consumption and smaller rack footprint, and more efficient use of IT resources.

About Acme Packet

Acme Packet (NASDAQ: APKT), the leader in session delivery network solutions, enables the trusted, first-class delivery of next-generation voice, data and unified communications services and applications across IP networks. Our Net-Net product family fulfills demanding security, service assurance and regulatory requirements in service provider, enterprise and contact center networks. Based in Bedford, Massachusetts, Acme Packet designs and manufactures its products in the USA, selling them through over 220 reseller partners worldwide. More than 1,600 customers in 107 countries have deployed over 16,000 Acme Packet systems, including 88 of the top 100 service providers and 41 of the Fortune 100. For more information visit www.acmepacket.com.

About IPC

IPC Systems, Inc. offers high and low touch trading communications solutions to the global financial trading community including the top investment banks, hedge funds and investment managers in established and emerging markets. With 100% focus on this sector and nearly 40 years of expertise and an unrivaled record of innovation, IPC provides customers with unified solutions that support collaborative voice trading and real-time electronic trading and market data connectivity.  IPC's market-leading offerings include the first unified communications/application platform, award-winning hard and soft turrets and electronic connectivity services. IPC's global reach extends to more than 58 countries – including a Financial Extranet of 4,000 on-net locations in over 700 cities and more than 115,000 turrets deployed worldwide. Headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey, IPC has approximately 1,000 employees located throughout the Americas and the EMEA and Asia-Pacific regions. For more information, visit www.ipc.com.