Development of the basic system was complete in August 2000, and we felt that we had attained a certain technical level. I was feeling a sense of achievement since the lineup of solutions for voice communication in a full IP network was ready for corporate networks.

That year, IP-PBX "IPstage" was shipped while obtaining assessments from forward-thinking customers (Fig. 1). Although I had confidence in the quality, there were still some problems that were unexpected. I became extremely busy due to the start of development on the next improved version and at the same time, handling customer　follow-up issues. I want to apologize again for the inconvenience I had caused customers at that time.

Some customers felt that I was too hung up on full IP. In my mind, I had to. But why full IP?

There was no mistake in my desire to decrease infrastructure cost through IP integration. Although there is no need to venture into that field if giving priority to only businesses of the immediate future; however, voice would sooner or later become caught in IP networks. Hence, I believed that a rich and more convenient society would come by integrating voice with information. And I knew there would always be additional value by integrating voice with data, not just lowering infrastructure cost.

This was not just a personal belief. The company also had such a sense of direction. And I believe our vision was not wrong. Just like the scenario we had drawn, PCs spread in corporate offices to one PC per person. At the same time, business style of using email became common, and environments of LAN started to appear. Port unit cost of LAN switches also dropped drastically and there was no doubt that voice would be fully integrated in the trend of data networks.

But a vision for business does not always link directly and easily with reality. No matter what we believe to be is correct, the cycle for the widespread adoption will not occur if the process up to the delivery of the value becomes frayed. I became acutely aware of this fact. In order to open a market with the commercialization of a leading product, there is first the need to create a roadmap. I want to note that there were tremendous efforts by related personnel in development, sales, SE, dealer, construction and maintenance, as well as the understanding and support of customers accepting this unknown product as a result before the roadmap to the widespread adoption of IPstage was completed.