Witness Systems Enhances IP Recording Software

17 September 2004

Witness Systems Enhances IP Recording Software

NEW ZEALAND (September 17, 2004) - Witness Systems (NASDAQ: WITS), the IP recording company and global provider of performance optimisation software and services, today announced enhanced functionality for its recording software for Internet Protocol (IP) telephony environments. The market-leading eQuality® ContactStore for IP application, built on the eQuality suite's browser-based architecture, provides a single view of all customer contacts with new enterprise management capabilities that offer users a central point of administration when deploying large multi-site recording systems.

Today, many organisations are deploying IP telephony to reduce their cost of communications, while enabling a feature-rich infrastructure that will fundamentally change the way they do business. For large deployments with multiple customer interaction recorders spread across numerous site locations, companies can leverage eQuality ContactStore for IP's single URL administration point and benefit from more control, greater consistency, increased security, less resources and a straight-forward configuration.

"Even as recently as two years ago, the wholesale adoption of Voice over IP (VoIP) was still a very distant prospect. But the reality today is that a huge proportion of organisations are looking very seriously at implementing VoIP within the next 12-24 months, with IDC estimating the overall market for this technology growing at an average compound growth rate of 45 per cent," said Dermot McCutcheon, Managing Director Australia and New Zealand for Witness Systems.

The Asia Pacific region leads the world in the uptake of VoIP, driven in no small part by the region's rapidly expanding contact centre industry. In Australia, IP telephony hardware revenue is expected to reach AUD679.33 million by 2006, with around 40 per cent of existing equipment to be replaced by hardware including IP telephony capability, according to IDC.

IPT's Potential Can Improve Business Performance
Witness Systems' eQuality ContactStore for IP allows organisations to acquire more value from telephone contacts by immediately recording, categorising, notifying and storing IP telephony calls for compliance requirements and quality purposes. The right people throughout the company can then review and act upon this pool of captured customer intelligence to help serve customers better.

eQuality ContactStore for IP - which supports all of the major switch vendor platforms and scales from a single seat system to a distributed multi-site enterprise with thousands of channels - captures and stores up to 100 percent of interactions and assigns contact attributes for easy identification and reference. Further, the recording can be user-activated during a call to capture/retain the entire interaction from start to finish, a feature that's especially valuable when handling calls associated with complaints, disputes and threats.

The enterprise management enhancements enable companies to benefit from extension management, which users can handle from a remote site, and extension visualisation, which lets users observe configured extensions and modes on a per recorder basis. It also enables them to view all extensions without navigating to recorders on a per site basis, as well as benefit from the solution's enterprise user/extension import capabilities, minimising the effort required to maintain optimum system configuration. By bringing new efficiency to every desktop that is equipped with an IP phone, companies are extending that efficiency to the entire organisation by capturing and sharing recorded interactions.

"With IP telephony, IP recording applications - such as Witness Systems' eQuality - are becoming viable to deploy both in the IP-enabled contact centre and beyond. Analysing all of these external communications is more important than ever as every business seeks to gain a competitive advantage from better understanding their customers and acting on insights contained in interactions with them," McCutcheon said. "Our eQuality ContactStore for IP continues to be the most widely deployed IP recording solution on the market. With its enhanced scalability and robust enterprise management functionality, the solution is enjoying rapid uptake. Further, its ability to co-exist with traditional telephony recording in the same system, and support the full range of Witness Systems eQuality applications, continues to protect users' investments as the demands of their businesses develop and change, and as they modernise and evolve their network infrastructure."

Specifications and Availability
Available now, eQuality ContactStore for IP runs on industry standard servers, and unlike many competitors, uses no proprietary hardware. In addition to operating on open standards, the software is Windows 2000 based with open storage. Its rich and easy integration with the IP telephony system reduces the complexities and dependencies on separate CTI servers and components. Configuration is performed via simple Windows snap-in.

WEBINAR - VoIP - What's the Latest, and What Does It Mean For Contact Centres?
Witness Systems is hosting a webinar on the opportunities for Asia Pacific contact centres resulting from the growing adoption of VoIP. Indications are that the contact centre is emerging as the "killer application" for VoIP, because it is the perfect environment to exploit all of the functionality and capabilities this technology has to offer. Oscar Alban, Principal Global Market Consultant and recognised expert in the contact centre and customer service arena is presenting this webinar. Organisations which have already made the move, or are considering the potential benefits of moving to VoIP technology in the near future, should not miss this webinar session.

This webinar will take place on Thursday, September 23, 2004 at the following times: 7:00am India, 9.30am Hong Kong/ Malaysia/ Manila/ Singapore/ Taipei, 10.30am Korea/ Tokyo, 11:30am Australian EST, 1:30pm New Zealand. To register, attendees should simply email their contact details to: aoni@witness.com, including their name, position title, organisation, street address, telephone, fax and email address in the registration email. Once registered, attendees will receive a reply confirmation email prior to the webinar, supplying dial-in and log-on details for the session. The webinar will be approximately 60 minutes in duration.

About Witness Systems
Witness Systems (NASDAQ: WITS) provides the contact centre industry's first integrated performance optimisation software suite to help global enterprises capture customer intelligence and optimize workforce performance. The browser-based eQuality® software is comprised of compliance, high-volume and business-driven recording solutions for customer contact centers and IP telephony, as well as performance analysis and e-learning applications. The closed-loop suite enables companies to capture and retrieve, learn and train, and report and analyse customer interactions and back office transactions to develop staff, increase revenue, reduce costs, and achieve greater customer retention and loyalty. An integrated business consulting, implementation and training methodology enables organisations to maximize their return on investment. For additional information about Witness Systems and its eQuality software suite, visit www.witness.com.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-looking Statements: Information in this release that involves Witness Systems' expectations, plans, intentions or strategies regarding the future are forward-looking statements that are not facts and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. They are identified by words such as "anticipates," "expects," "intends," "plans," "believes," "estimates," and similar expressions. These statements are based upon information available to Witness Systems as of the date of this release, and the company assumes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statement.

Forward-looking statements believed true when made may ultimately prove to be incorrect. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, some of which are beyond our control and may cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations.

Some of the factors that could cause actual future results to differ materially from current expectations include fluctuations in customer demand and the timing of orders; the company's ability to manage its growth; the risk of new product introductions and customer acceptance of new products; the rapid technological change which characterizes the company's markets; the risks associated with international sales as the company expands its markets, including the risks associated with foreign currency fluctuations; the ability of the company to complete and integrate successfully any acquisitions or investments it may make; and the ability of the company to compete successfully in the future, as well as other risks identified under the caption "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" in the company's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the period ending March 31, 2004, and any other reports filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Witness, eQuality and the Witness logo are United States registered trademarks of Witness Systems, Inc., protected by laws of the U.S. and other countries. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.

ENDS

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