Frost & Sullivan Confers 2004 Market Penetration Leadership Award on Cisco Systems.

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- In a recent study entitled North American ACD Systems Market, Frost & Sullivan recognized Cisco Systems' increased presence in the contact center market. For strengthening its position in the general contact center market, Cisco is the recipient of the 2004 Frost & Sullivan Market Penetration Leadership Award, given each year to the company that has demonstrated superiority in capturing market share within its industry. It recognizes the recipient's superiority in product innovation, marketing, and sales strategies, which has resulted in the largest gain in market share over the past 2-3 years.

Cisco's impressive performance in the fast-growing IP-based automatic call distributor (ACD) segment of the market was a key driver in its overall market penetration, and the company held the fifth position overall for 2003 in the highly competitive ACD market.

Cisco's entry into the contact center space in December 2000 caused much concern among traditional ACD vendors, who noted Cisco's widely recognized brand, extensive market reach, and well articulated vision of IP telephony's future. Since that time, the company has significantly increased its market penetration through a combination of accelerated product development and expanded distribution channel development.

"In a space of three years, Cisco has deployed more than 1,700 contact centers worldwide running on the Cisco Internet Protocol Contact Center (IPCC) product line," says Frost & Sullivan program manager Katrina Howell. "In addition to product development and channel distribution focus, a key to the company's growth has been marketing initiatives such as the 'Customer Interaction Network' concept, which clearly communicates the virtualization benefits of IP telephony." Cisco defines a Customer Interaction Network as a combination of architecture and business strategy that helps enable efficient and effective customer communication across an enterprise-wide, globally-capable, highly-available, distributed network that can deliver any application, to any resource, in any medium, anywhere.

Cisco markets its products with an emphasis on the real convergence between voice/data infrastructure and applications, stressing that this is the true value of IP telephony solutions. The company not only launched this concept but also communicated it to the market by increasing its presence at important industry events such as trade shows and technology partner events.

Cisco's contact center products also offer attractive price points that appeal to all market segments. It provides the IPCC products in Express, Enterprise, and Hosted editions, catering to the different needs in varying market segments.

Further, the company has been very successful in the small-to-medium call center markets -- partly due to its channel distribution strategy. Cisco expanded its relationships with partners in the data world -- Dimension Data, eLoyalty, Norstan, and BellSouth -- and ported them to the voice market through rigorous training sessions. It also has relationships with traditional telephony distributors such as NextiraOne and SBC which are well entrenched in the voice market. Other partners including Hewlett-Packard, IBM Global Services, Capgemini Ernst & Young, and Accenture aid in contact center customer interaction.

"We're very pleased that Frost & Sullivan has recognized Cisco's achievements over the last year. Cisco provides a unique capability in optimizing customer contact applications and infrastructures to create real business value," said John Hernandez, Director of Product Marketing for Cisco. "The Frost & Sullivan Market Penetration Leadership Award validates our approach to the customer contact market and highlights Cisco's momentum in this competitive market."

About Frost & Sullivan

Founded in 1961, Frost & Sullivan is recognized as a global leader in growth consulting. Frost & Sullivan awards are presented to companies that demonstrate excellence in their industry through diligence, commitment, and innovative business strategies required to advance in the global marketplace. Frost & Sullivan rigorously analyzes specific criteria to determine award recipients in a vast variety of market industries and landscapes. For further information, visit www.frost.com.