WITS Witness Systems (MM)

New full-time recording software provides maximum scalability and resiliency while lowering total cost of ownership through standard, non-proprietary components Witness Systems (NASDAQ: WITS), a leading global provider of workforce optimization software and services, today announced the next-generation, software-based recording engine for its Impact 360(TM) solution, which was launched last month. The new recording engine serves as the foundation for the company's Impact 360 Compliance Recording solution, leveraging Witness Systems' years of experience in traditional full-time recording and its leadership in software-based IP Telephony deployments. The new recorder enables enterprises to capture, store and retrieve customer contacts for verification, as well as analyze trends, for improved business intelligence. Government and industry regulations, liability issues and risk management practices have prompted many organizations to record and archive customer interactions. Impact 360 Compliance Recording is designed to minimize the business risk associated with disputes and fraud, and to allow enterprises to retrieve and replay interactions intuitively using powerful search options. Commercially available, non-proprietary components lower the cost of ownership by requiring less hardware than competitive offerings and by allowing organizations to source the components themselves instead of purchasing single-source, proprietary systems. According to The Pelorus Group and its "World Contact Center Recording Systems Market" report (June 2005), the recording market is transitioning to a software and services model, where clients source their own servers, storage systems, voice cards and related system hardware. "Software-centric solutions running on industry standard servers, such as Impact 360 from Witness Systems, are now extremely reliable," said Dick Bucci, associate consultant. "Further, advances in speech and data mining make it much more feasible to interrogate databases in order to get answers to specific questions." The new recording engine is built to capture up to 100 percent of interactions within traditional TDM environments, and co-exist with IP Telephony environments, to deliver highly-scalable recording - from just a few channels to tens of thousands - by easily networking multiple recorders together. In addition, the Impact 360 platform helps facilitate the transition from traditional TDM to IP recording because the technologies can co-exist within the same infrastructure. Further, the platform helps protect enterprise investments in hardware by enabling them to migrate their recording infrastructure easily from one environment to the other without the need for heavy reinvestment in costly hardware. Based on a highly resilient platform, users can configure the recorder to start and stop recording based on several types of events, such as CTI, VOX or D-Channel. This sophisticated level of configuration provides piece of mind to those organizations that are recording for liability and compliance reasons with the assurance that Impact 360 is capturing their calls. For example, if the CTI application is controlling the call recording and it is unable to transmit information, the recorder can immediately go into a fallback mode, ensuring that Impact 360 records and locates the interactions. The solution can easily be administered and propagated throughout the enterprise using Impact 360's native, browser-based enterprise management interface. The interface helps organizations simplify global system administration by: -- Centralizing the network management for multiple recorders across the enterprise, regardless of their physical location, through an easy-to-use, browser-based enterprise management interface. -- Providing centralized alerts and notification for all recorders in the enterprise, which allows administrators to locate and diagnose system performance for all recorders in their global recording network from a single location. -- Decreasing IT support costs and reducing system configuration errors by allowing users to copy current system configurations to multiple recorders throughout their global recording network. -- Consolidating, archiving and retrieving captured contacts easily across the enterprise, leveraging high-capacity, high-speed storage with instant access and a high level of resilience. Gain New Insight From Analysis of Structured and Unstructured Data Impact 360's contact visualization function allows organizations to analyze customer interaction trends based on structured data tagged to recordings, such as number of times transferred, closed sales, disposition type and even if the customer has called in the previous 24 hours. The software helps users quickly identify those interactions that relate to first call resolution, multiple call transfers and sales problems, and enables them to drill to actual recordings where that issue is identified to gain more insight. With Impact 360, organizations also can analyze trends from the unstructured data contained in the recordings themselves via speech analysis, including key word/phrase and context-based speech mining, as well as proactive trend mining. For instance, the speech analysis functionality can identify the most frequently spoken words, thus highlighting previously undetected trends and allowing organizations to respond quickly. "By offering increased capacities and using standard, non-proprietary components, Impact 360 helps balance quality of service, resiliency, scalability and cost of ownership," said John Bourne, senior vice president of global product management for Witness Systems. "Our next-generation recorder provides organizations with access to a single view of the customer, enabling them to search and retrieve any interaction or contact regardless of location." About Impact 360 Impact 360 is a workforce optimization solution that brings together software and services for workforce management, quality monitoring/full-time recording, e-learning and performance management under a framework that provides a single user interface and centralized administration. By unifying these components, Impact 360 maximizes the information flow within the enterprise, providing deep insight into workforce performance, customer interactions and customer service processes, while driving cost savings, strategic decision-making and competitive advantage. About Witness Systems Witness Systems (NASDAQ: WITS) is a leading global provider of workforce optimization software and services. The company's Impact 360(TM) solution - which plays a strategic role in the customer interaction centers of Global 2000 and small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) worldwide - is also deployed in IP Telephony and back office environments, and throughout the extended enterprise, including branch offices. Witness Systems' software is comprised of quality monitoring, compliance, high-volume and IP Telephony recording solutions, as well as workforce management, actionable learning and performance management. The company's solutions enable organizations to optimize their people, processes and technology throughout the enterprise. Witness Systems' customers benefit from an integrated business consulting, implementation and training methodology that supports a rapid deployment, enabling them to drive revenue, reduce operational costs, and achieve greater customer retention and loyalty. For additional information about Witness Systems, 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 Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2004 and its Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2005, as filed 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.