Dragon Systems Names Steve Semenzato Vice President of North American Channel Sales.

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 27, 1998--Dragon Systems, Inc.(R), the worldwide leader in speech recognition solutions, announced the appointment of Steve Semenzato to Vice President of North American Channel Sales today at SpeechTEK '98, a leading conference and exhibition for speech technology. In this capacity, he will continue leading the channel sales team, including reseller and telesales operations. His promotion caps a two-and-a-half year tenure as Director of North American Sales where he oversaw the development and execution of the company's widely successful channel strategy, through which Dragon Systems has become the seventh largest publisher of business software, according to PC Data.

"Steve's leadership of the sales team at Dragon Systems has been a critical factor in the company's success," said Dragon Systems COO John Shagoury. "This promotion recognizes the contribution he has made and the leadership he will continue to provide."

Semenzato joined Dragon Systems from the worldwide leader in non-linear video editing systems, Avid Technology of Tewksbury, Mass., where he managed sales for the desktop group. He began at Avid in the European operation where he opened markets in the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Scandinavia, the Middle East, and other parts of Europe. During that time, he grew the business from zero to $11 million in 18 months. He then transferred to Avid in the U.S. as a business development manager and then as North American Sales Manager, where he built the channel plan for "shrink wrapped" software. Steve has more than 10 years of sales experience and earned an engineering degree from Staffordshire University in Stafford, England.

Dragon Systems, Inc., the Natural Speech Company, is a worldwide leader in PC speech recognition. Dragon develops and markets high-performance, cost-effective speech and language technology tools that, in multiple world languages (including American English, British English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Swedish) enable users to create any text, issue commands and enter and access data simply by speaking. The company also licenses its technology worldwide through developers, distributors, resellers, OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) and ISVs (Integrated Software Vendors). Dragon Systems ports its technology across multiple operating systems and hardware platforms from hand-held devices and personal computers to workstations, and is pursuing leading-edge research and development projects for computer and telecommunications applications.

Founded in 1982, Dragon Systems is headquartered in Newton, Massachusetts; its Dragon Systems UK Ltd. subsidiary, which is focused on speech recognition for telephony and high-noise environments, is based in Cheltenham, England; Dragon Systems GmbH is located in Munich, Germany, Dragon Systems has a sales office in Boulogne-Billancourt, France. Dragon Systems can be found on the world wide web at: www.dragonsys.com or www.naturalspeech.com.