I had always believed that innovation does not arrive fully formed. It comes in pieces—ideas scattered across people, places, and time—waiting for someone to recognize what they can become. By the mid-1970s, the pieces for Voicemail were already on the table.  But even then, something was missing. There was no common language. No shared identity. No sense -- yet—that this was the beginning of a global shift in communication.

IBM had proven that voice could be digitized, stored, and retrieved. Their Speech Filing System showed that spoken words did not have to vanish into the air—they could be captured, stored, and delivered later. In 1979, VMX entered the commercial arena with the Voice Message Exchange storiing voice for office PBX telephone systems.. “In 1979 Dow Brian and I envisioned a global voicemail service that would soon became an industry and we trademarked it "Voicemail.”

As Co-Founders of Voicemail International we built the first Central Office certified Voicemail System and and in the following seven years we installed 35 licensed centers for service providers in 14 countries.  At that point the VMI board of directors decided to sell enterprise systems and destroyed the service program and the company. Rene Beusch, managing director of the Swiss PTT and I Co-Foundered the International Voicemail Association serving as Chairman and President for 20 years and leading an industry that brought about the worldwide proliferation of voicemail as a new way to communicate!