Interwise Predicts Changes to Conferencing Market for 2007.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Interwise[R], the global leader in unlimited voice, Web and video conferencing for the enterprise, today made a series of predictions for the enterprise conferencing market in 2007. Among them, executives will drive demand for enterprise-wide IP conferencing and for medium to large companies, IT requirements will determine what conferencing applications rise to the status of email.

Senior executives will increasingly drive demand for IP conferencing platforms. "Recognizing they must communicate more directly and more often with employees to control business results, executives are accelerating the purchase of enterprise-wide conferencing solutions," said Frank Zvi, president and CEO, Interwise. "By holding virtual 'all hands' employee Webcasts and frequent, focused Web meetings with field-level teams, executives can deepen their visibility into the status of business activities, flag broken processes, strengthen morale and as a result, make timely mid-course corrections to key initiatives. We see more executive-driven demand replacing traditional departmental-level demand in 2007."

Voice and Web conferencing will become as ubiquitous as email in high performance organizations. Rising expectations among knowledge workers for real time collaboration tools, combined with the growing availability of fixed price / unlimited use licenses and enterprise-class technologies, will lead IT organizations to make voice and web conferencing a core application that is widely distributed within organizations, like email.

Price will be overshadowed by IT-related requirements as the gating criteria for widely deployed IP Conferencing among mid- to large-sized organizations. As conferencing technology is applied more broadly within enterprises, IT issues such as scalability, security, deployment flexibility and the ability to integrate with existing infrastructures will overtake price as the critical consideration for choosing a company-wide conferencing standard. An emerging mainstream topic will be how buyers should address the IT issues gating the transformation of conferencing into a desktop utility. Enterprise IT staffs will want to familiarize themselves with alternatives to SAAS / hosted conferencing offerings and how most of them differ in their ability to meet IT requirements.

Conferencing technologies with deployment options limited to either pure on-site or pure hosted service will be unable meet the needs of distributed, mobile enterprises. Most companies of 1,000 or more people have an ever-changing mixture of large offices, small offices, home workers and traveling employees. On-site deployments, which cost less and are more secure than hosted services, work well for large offices with large conferencing volumes and on-site IT assets. Hosted services can be more appropriate for smaller offices and travelers. Forcing companies to choose one or the other deployment model guarantees a poor fit for some of the organization. Interwise sees a hybrid of the two deployment models emerging in 2007 as the preferred option for conferencing buyers.

The benefits of VoIP-based conferencing will continue to ruin the appeal of pay-per-minute offerings. During 2007, pay-per-minute conferencing services will become even less appealing as more enterprises choose VoIP-based solutions that can be acquired for a fixed cost with unlimited usage. According to a US-based research firm, in 2005, VoIP service revenue doubled in North America, Europe and Asia and it is expected to continue booming for at least the next 5 years. This signals the death knell for pay-per-minute offerings, particularly as VoIP-based conferencing is able to serve as a proof point of ROI from IP networks. Companies like Interwise, which integrate VoIP and TDM conferencing within a single solution giving customers better access choices for users and higher overall cost reduction from legacy approaches, will have a significant advantage in the market.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) agendas will prompt corporate travel reduction policies with the 'green' light. 2006 was the year that global climate change became a mainstream concern. In 2007, businesses will be more expected to address their own environmental impact. Air travel is the largest source of carbon emissions for non-manufacturing organizations and the next 12 months will see a rapid change of corporate travel policies amongst enterprises, as they attempt to tackle reduction of their carbon emissions, head-on. Technologies able to further CSR agendas, such as virtual conferencing that can reduce a corporation's impact on carbon emissions, will be see a new form of endorsement in 2007 in the form of CSR compliance.

About Interwise

Interwise is the leader in delivering unlimited voice, Web, and video conferencing for the enterprise. Interwise' fixed price / unlimited usage business model and enterprise-class technology combine to make it easy for companies to deliver conferencing and collaboration as a core business application. Interwise Connect replaces multiple products with a single, integrated voice, Web and video conferencing solution that sets conferencing free enterprise-wide, allowing 700 percent or more growth in usage across the organization at no additional cost. For more information, visit www.interwise.com.

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