Cisco Completes TANDBERG Offer and Launches Compulsory Acquisition

Integrated Cisco TelePresence^TM Product Portfolio to Usher In New Way of Working

SAN JOSE, Calif. – April 18, 2010 – Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) today announced it has completed its voluntary offer for TANDBERG (OSLO: TAA), a global leader in video communications. The close of this transaction, and the consequent creation of an extensive combined product portfolio, accelerates Cisco's vision of changing the way people communicate and collaborate by delivering simple, unique and interoperable collaboration experiences.

"Today we are celebrating a very important step for our customers in the journey to put people at the center of collaboration and change the way we work," said Marthin De Beer, senior vice president, Emerging Technologies Business Group, Cisco. "We strongly believe that telepresence – the next generation of videoconferencing – along with Cisco's entire rich collaboration portfolio, powers this new way of working where everyone, everywhere, can be more productive through the pervasive use of video and face-to-face collaboration."

The full TANDBERG product line is now part of the Cisco TelePresence^TM portfolio. Through this combined offering, the Cisco TelePresence business provides customers with access to a fully integrated architecture, a comprehensive network-based endpoint and infrastructure portfolio – designed to help provide multivendor interoperability – and a suite of unique experiences, customizable applications and flexible deployment models.

With the close of this transaction, Fredrik Halvorsen, the former CEO of TANDBERG, becomes senior vice president and leader of the new TelePresence Technology Group within De Beer's organization. This newly-formed group includes three fully integrated businesses that will focus on endpoints, infrastructure and Cisco TelePresence cloud services.

Under this leadership, and with unified product lines, employees and vision, Cisco aims to provide consistency and investment protection for customers while speeding innovation that will positively impact the creation of new collaboration experiences.

Under the terms of the tender offer, and following the completion of the compulsory acquisition of shares, Cisco will have purchased all of the outstanding shares of TANDBERG for 170 Norwegian kroner per share for an aggregate purchase price of approximately 19 billion Norwegian kroner or $3.3 billion. Cisco expects the acquisition to be dilutive to non-GAAP earnings in fiscal year 2010 and accretive to non-GAAP earnings in fiscal year 2011.

The New Cisco TelePresence Experience: Endpoints, Infrastructure and Cisco TelePresence Cloud Services

Cisco is unique in its architectural approach to collaboration, bringing together network-based, open, integrated and interoperable solutions. From multipurpose rooms and immersive solutions to personal systems that include PC clients, the combined Cisco TelePresence portfolio retains the full range of endpoints, infrastructure products and flexible deployment options from Cisco and TANDBERG. Customers are also provided with a comprehensive set of solution platforms for horizontal and industry applications. Cisco has committed to work to ensure the entire portfolio interoperates with third-party systems and PC video clients, including Microsoft Office Communicator.

The integrated infrastructure includes offerings and services that allow customers to enjoy exceptional intra- and intercompany collaboration experiences, high-performance multipoint meetings, and any-to-any interoperability. The services and offerings also allow robust management and scheduling capabilities and highly secure usability features like "One Button to Push" and "Continuous Presence." Unique to Cisco TelePresence is a set of media services for advanced recording, streaming, transcribing, transcoding and video analytics capabilities.

Cisco also provides a spectrum of on- and off-premise deployment and service options for Cisco TelePresence. From comprehensive managed services, including intercompany, from the world's top service provider partners to hosted intercompany services, cloud-based applications and even "do it yourself" options, customers have access to flexible deployment and services options that meet their unique needs. This means that customers can choose the right mix of intercompany collaboration options based on audience, location and connectivity.

Extended Industry Interoperability and Standards Development

Beyond interoperability across company boundaries, the combined Cisco TelePresence portfolio provides a rich assortment of options designed to facilitate any-to-any video interoperability. These multivendor support options and our commitment to deliver broad-based industry standards through the Telepresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP) for native telepresence interoperability, provide customers with investment protection and flexible options for extending their investments to new forms of collaboration.

TIP provides the underpinning for a scalable multiscreen switched architecture and was released as a method to provide native telepresence interoperability. TIP is currently available under license from Cisco and will be transferred to the International Multimedia Teleconferencing Consortium (IMTC) or another independent industry body to facilitate interoperability.

To advance native telepresence interoperability, Cisco is launching the TIP Open Source project and will publish the TIP source code libraries by July 1, 2010. Nine videoconferencing and telepresence vendors have licensed TIP so far.

Expanded Partner Opportunities

The Cisco and TANDBERG worldwide ecosystem of partners that deliver and support world-class Cisco TelePresence and video collaboration experiences will continue to support customers. Cisco will honor existing services and support commitments made to TANDBERG customers and partners through the TANDBERG service team. Cisco plans to reveal a harmonized partner strategy that combines the best of the TANDBERG and Cisco programs to help ensure a seamless experience for existing and new customers, and will provide exciting new opportunities for partners.

Launch of Compulsory Acquisition

Cisco also announced today that its wholly owned subsidiary Cisco Systems Netherlands Holdings BV ("Cisco BV") shall acquire all of the outstanding issued shares in TANDBERG that are not currently owned by Cisco BV, by a compulsory acquisition of shares. Following completion of the compulsory acquisition, Cisco BV will be the sole shareholder of TANDBERG.

With the closing of the voluntary offer, Cisco BV holds approximately 91.1 % of the voting rights and share capital in TANDBERG. Cisco BV has resolved to exercise its right to conduct a compulsory acquisition of the shares in TANDBERG, pursuant to the Norwegian Securities Trading Act section 6-22, c.f. the Norwegian Public Limited Companies Act section 4-25. The compulsory acquisition will be effective from the close of trading today, and today will be the last day TANDBERG shares are traded on the Oslo Stock Exchange.

Cisco BV is offering consideration of NOK 170.00 per share in the compulsory acquisition, which is the same price paid in the voluntary offer.

A letter containing information about the price offered and other matters in relation to the compulsory acquisition will be sent to all shareholders whose shares are subject to the compulsory acquisition. Subsequent to the compulsory acquisition, TANDBERG plans to apply for delisting of the company's shares on the Oslo Stock Exchange as soon as practically possible.

The acquisition remains subject to regulatory review in Brazil; however, clearance in Brazil is not a condition to closing.

Press Contact(s)
Candice Carvell	Cisco Systems, Inc.	+1 408 424 0206	kcarvell@cisco.com
Heather Dickinson	Cisco Systems, Inc.	+44 20 8824 6049	hdickins@cisco.com

Integrated telecoms call for fair treatment from parliament

TORONTO -- The country’s big communications firms presented a unified front yesterday during parliamentary hearings into whether Ottawa should lift foreign-ownership restrictions in the telecom sector as a way to promote competition, enhance services and create jobs.

Canada’s big three integrated telecoms, Rogers Communications Inc., BCE Inc., and Telus Corp. told parliamentarians that if they insisted on meddling in the sector, it must be done in a “symmetrical” fashion.

“New rules cannot advantage foreign investors to the detriment of Canadian companies,” said Michael Hennessy, senior vice-president of regulatory at Telus Corp. “Fairness requires equal treatment.”

A movement to open up the market has roots in a 2006 policy report warning that Canada’s telecommunications sector should be liberalized to avoid competitive stagnation and its economic consequences. A second panel two years ago endorsed the 2006 study, suggesting a gradual lifting of foreign-ownership restrictions in two phases over five years.

The first phase would remove barriers for new entrants and smaller players that command less than 10% market share, allowing international capital to fund firms who could grow to rival incumbents. The second phase would contemplate lifting restrictions on incumbents.

Telus, Bell and Rogers attacked the notion, saying it would disadvantage the three dominant telecoms. “Make it symmetrical,” said Mirko Bibic, Bell’s chief of regulatory. “We should all have access to foreign capital.”

That argument has its critics. Rogers, Bell and Telus dominate Internet, phone, cable and wireless services and have no trouble accessing capital at attractive rates at home or in international debt markets.

In contrast, smaller and new firms in the sector like the raft of new wireless players still pay very high costs for capital, analysts say, and face an extremely difficult task of growing share.

“This group are all not going to survive and the market knows that. The risk premium is very high,” said one legal source close to a new entrant. “So it’s not accurate for Bell and Telus to argue that Public Mobile, [Mobilicity] and Globalive would be at a competitive advantage in accessing foreign markets.”

The House of Commons hearing was convened in light of the controversial decision by cabinet to allow Globalive Wireless Management Corp., which has partnered with Egyptian carrier Orascom, to enter Canada’s cellphone market.

The December decision was followed by remarks in last month’s Speech from the Throne that indicate the Harper Conservatives support the 2006 and 2008 panel suggestions.

On Tuesday, regulatory chief Konrad von Finckenstein said the CRTC opposed complete liberalization but did support raising foreign control to 49%. The committee is expected to release a response by summer.

Financial Post

jasturgeon@nationalpost.com

Streaming Voice Equals Streaming Revenue

CRNTech's article/roundup on SME systems. Avaya IP Office is included and gets a favorable review http://tiny.cc/y5mhr

By Edward J. Correia, ChannelWeb

Cisco Brings Business Collaboration to the iPad with Cisco WebEx Meeting Center Available Immediately on the App Store

Further enhancing the online meeting experience for participants, Cisco last week announced Cisco WebEx Meeting Center for the Apple iPad. This free business application allows participants to join and engage in robust online meetings right from their iPad with a few simple taps on the screen.

The Cisco WebEx application is available today via download from the App Store. Once downloaded, participants easily engage in meetings by tapping the meeting URL found in the email or calendar invitation. This application provides users another way to benefit from today’s widespread global WiFi access.

Written by: Jeff Wiener

Large Contact Centers Deploy ShoreTel's Unified Communications to Increase ROI and Agent Productivity

ShoreTel's powerful Enterprise Contact Center solution is easy to manage and integrate with business processes, even across multiple sites and offers cost-effective virtual contact centers

SUNNYVALE, Calif., April 7, 2010 – ShoreTel® (NASDAQ: SHOR), the leading provider of brilliantly simple IP phone systems with fully integrated UC, is seeing large multimedia contact centers increasingly choosing ShoreTel Contact Center solutions to help improve the customer experience, increase agent responsiveness, and achieve a rapid ROI. Driving the move to ShoreTel IP-based solutions is the ability for enterprises to easily deploy and integrate ShoreTel's powerful multimedia call center solution and best-in-class telephony platform across their entire organization.

NEWS HIGHLIGHTS

• Enterprise administrators can reduce support costs and lower TCO with a single solution that comprises contact center, desktop telephony client, phones and more, throughout the organization.
• With ShoreTel's distributed telephony platform, organizations can route incoming contacts to the most appropriate agent, regardless of location.
• Contact center agents can leverage the telephony presence of the entire user population on the system and across multiple sites to more quickly resolve customer issues.
• Sophisticated reporting tools generate detailed custom reports for specific campaigns.
• The ShoreTel Contact Center solution increases individual agent productivity and responsiveness, improving the customer experience and sales program management.
• The ShoreTel Contact Center application suite offers a range of features to satisfy the needs of all organizations, from basic call center capabilities to sophisticated distributed multimedia contact center capabilities. All-in-one capabilities include:
  • Multimedia
  • Integrated interactive voice response (IVR)
  • Outbound functionality
  • Integrated reporting
  • Hot standby redundancy
  • Intuitive call flow builder

ANALYST QUOTE

"In today's economic climate, contact centers must be able to serve customers effectively and they need to provide that service with fewer resources. That means enabling contact center agents to find the help they need when they need it and to manage the collaboration efficiently while at the same time keeping agent turnover low. ShoreTel's Unified Desktop, distributive telephony platform and contact center solutions provide necessary tools that allow agents to collaborate with each other and with experts both effectively and efficiently."

– Michael Barbagallo, President and Principal Analyst of Shenandoah Analytics

CUSTOMER QUOTES

"Morristown Utility Systems (MUS) provides water, power and FiberNet broadband cable services to the City of Morristown, Tennessee. When MUS decided to move into the new business venture of providing fiber to the home, they turned to ShoreTel for a robust UC solution that included ShoreTel Enterprise Contact Center. Thanks to ShoreTel, MUS was able to scale communications quickly and keep up with the increased call volumes resulting from this successful venture--all while improving the customer experience for new and existing customers."

- Morristown Utility Systems, Morristown, Tennessee

"Not only has ShoreTel given us a highly reliable communications platform that enables us to easily cope with city utility emergencies, such as power and water outages, the real-time statistics produced by ShoreTel Enterprise Contact Center provide important insight into call traffic in real time. As a result, we can easily and quickly ramp up agents in the event of an emergency or other spike in call traffic, such as the introduction of a new 'Fiber To The Home' business that produces a lot of calls."

- Mike Fawbush, Information Systems Manager, Morristown Utility Systems

"The North West Ambulance Service is an NHS Trust established to provide the best possible ambulance and pre-hospital care service to more than seven million people in a 5,400 square mile area in North West England. The result of a merger of four ambulance services in 2006, the Trust was running nine different phone systems and eight separate contact centers until it turned to ShoreTel for centralized control and management of one highly reliable, single-image solution."

- North West Ambulance Service, Bolton, UK

"In a geographically challenged Trust such as NWAS, we need a highly available unified communications system with fully integrated, enterprise-level contact centre functionality to support our operational and service staff as they provide quality healthcare to all our patients. The ShoreTel Enterprise Contact Centre solution has helped us save money by consolidating communications on a single platform across all locations, so we can easily manage traffic and reroute calls if necessary—all while keeping a strong focus on patient care. Furthermore, we estimate that we will have saved approximately £100,000 by the end of the first year, and plan to leverage this highly successful investment as a back up to our emergency phone system."

- Ian McDonald, Telecommunications Manager, North West Ambulance Service, UK

"Since 2005, MonaVie has been developing and marketing scientifically formulated, premium quality nutritional products. The company's business model is based on person-to-person distribution, and with thousands of distributors around the world, communication is the lifeblood of the organization. MonaVie turned to ShoreTel for a complete solution that is easy to manage and cost-effectively support the company's rapid growth."

- MonaVie, Utah, USA

"ShoreTel Enterprise Contact Center has allowed us to integrate several multimedia technologies, including outbound and email that improve agent productivity and let us rapidly respond to changing business conditions. The enterprise contact center allows us to easily blend agent skills and language skills since we service over 10 different languages and even more countries round the clock. Email routing to specialized super-agents has added one more sales avenue for us. Using the open interfaces and simple yet powerful ECC scripting we've also created a powerful outbound survey application, and integrated it with the ShoreTel Enterprise Contact Center IVR engine quickly and easily. The outbound survey application has allowed us to assess our customer satisfaction levels and assess agent training needs. The brilliant simplicity of the ShoreTel system allows us to be flexible and deliver powerful contact center solutions to all of our offices abroad."

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Nortel sells another Key Unit

The dismantling of Nortel Networks Corp. continued to gather speed yesterday after the once high-flying maker of telecom gear revealed that it has struck a deal to sell off yet another key business unit.

Operating under bankruptcy protection since January, Nortel said it has reached a deal to sell its Enterprise Solutions unit to New Jersey-based Avaya Inc. for $475 million US in a so-called “stalking horse” agreement that could pave the way for future bidders.

Avaya had been touted as a likely bidder for Nortel’s enterprise business, which supplies phone and other communications equipment to business around the world and recorded sales of $395 million during the first quarter of this year.

The deal is similar to one reached last month with Nokia Siemens Networks for Nortel’s CDMA-focused wireless division.

The joint venture between Finnish handset maker Nokia Corp. and Germany’s Siemens AG has agreed to pay $650 million for the unit and has pledged to keep about 800 jobs in Canada. A spokeswoman for Avaya declined to comment yesterday on whether the company’s purchase of Nortel’s enterprise division would impact employees.

Mike Zafirovski, the chief executive of Nortel, reiterated in a statement that Nortel is no longer attempting to restructure and emerge from bankruptcy protection, but is instead trying to sell off its most attractive divisions to the highest bidders.

Nortel filed for bankruptcy protection in January, citing high debt, high costs and the impact of the economic downturn. The event marked the beginning of the end for a company that was once considered to be the brightest star.

Avaya Announces Agreements to Purchase Nortel's Enterprise Solutions Business

Avaya Announces Agreements to Purchase Nortel's Enterprise Solutions Business

For Immediate Release: 20-Jul-2009 BASKING RIDGE, N.J. – Avaya today announced that it has signed agreements to purchase Nortel's enterprise solutions business for US$475 million. Avaya believes the agreements are a significant step in strengthening its leadership in business communications and positioning the company to effectively deliver industry leading enterprise communications solutions to customers around the globe. "The addition of Nortel Enterprise Solutions will increase Avaya's global scale, expand our channel partner network, and strengthen our world-class portfolio of products and services," said Kevin Kennedy, president and CEO, Avaya. "This is a strategic opportunity to acquire talent and complementary assets that position the combined company for growth and success. We are committed to protecting the communications investments of the customers of Avaya and Nortel, and to effectively executing the integration of Nortel Enterprise Solutions and Avaya." "As the largest reseller of Avaya and Nortel equipment to Canadian business, Bell believes Avaya's history of leadership in enterprise communications makes it an ideal candidate for this proposed transaction," said Stéphane Boisvert, President of Bell Business Markets. "Bell was the first major service provider to standardize on both Avaya and Nortel IP telephony solutions, and we are confident Avaya will continue to provide partners and customers with innovative business communications technologies and responsive customer support going forward." The proposed acquisition includes the Nortel Enterprise Solutions voice, data and government systems businesses. "Avaya's proposed acquisition of Nortel Enterprise Solutions is good news for our customers, who would benefit from the broadened range of compelling solutions," said Hanif Lalani, CEO, BT Global Services. "BT and Avaya have been working closely, and successfully, over the last couple of years. Building on our success, BT has plans to expand this engagement with Avaya over the next year to offer a full unified communications portfolio. Today's news strengthens this expansion plan." The transaction is subject to a competitive bidding process and requires the approval of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware and the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. Avaya expects that hearings before those courts to approve bidding procedures will be held within the next couple of weeks, followed by an auction, with hearings for approval of the ultimate sale to be held thereafter. In EMEA, Avaya has entered into an agreement with the Joint Administrators, on behalf of the EMEA entities for which they have been appointed and the transaction is subject to information and consultation with employee representatives and approval of the courts in France and Israel. The transaction is also subject to customary closing conditions, including receipt of necessary regulatory approvals. About Avaya Avaya is a global leader in enterprise communications systems. The company provides unified communications, contact centers, and related services directly and through its channel partners to leading businesses and organizations around the world. Enterprises of all sizes depend on Avaya for state-of-the-art communications that improve efficiency, collaboration, customer service and competitiveness. For more information please visit www.avaya.com.

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