Obviously, we didn't pass the shipment judgment. I was so sorry for the other two development teams. However, I was certain that we had successfully accomplished a milestone. From the bottom of my heart, I thanked the members developing LU, the members that saved us with signal processing and the members who tweaked the LSI software until the very end.

Starting with Koji who organized development, members of development who had attended the meeting could not hide their disappointment. What saved us was the positive energy of all members. That night, we had a small party with the development members in recognition of their services. Although verification work awaited us on the next day, the gloomy atmosphere was already gone since the goal was now crystal clear.

I took that weekend off. It was the first break in months and the first time in quite a while that I lived normally according to the calendar. I slept as if I were in a coma. Apparently, there were some development members that slept straight for 24 hours, though this is probably a common scene for those involved in development.

Later, we were able to prove that the measure for the error was correct and officially passed the shipment judgment on February 14th, half a month since the first shipment judgment meeting. Valentine's Day in 2000 became an important day of commemoration. It was the day the development of the first IP-PBX was completed in Japan.

Leader of full IP-PBX

IPstage, the first IP-PBX, was used by a certain forward-thinking customer. And up to the present, IPstage has been used by many, many users (Fig. 1). My gratitude goes to each and every customer for allowing IPstage to develop into what it is today.

It was a tough development project. Although there is much that I cannot disclose, I will summarize the result of the project.