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Dual Recognition for Cisco With Frost & Sullivan's 2005 Market Penetration and Competitive Strategy Leadership AwardsPALO ALTO, Calif., Aug. 22 /PRNewswire/ -- Frost & Sullivan has selected Cisco Systems, Inc. as the recipient of the 2005 Market Penetration Leadership Award in the North American automatic call distribution (ACD) market. Cisco also received the Competitive Strategy Leadership Award in the computer telephony integration (CTI) product markets. Other factors that have helped boost the company's ratings are a robust and continually improving product line, effective competitive displacement strategies, and its leadership in the data communications market. Cisco's IP contact center (IPCC) combines multi-channel ACD functionalities with IP telephony, thereby enabling companies to deploy a distributed contact center infrastructure. The company has added new features to the version 6.0 of its IPCC enterprise product. Some of those include interactive voice response (IVR) transfer capabilities with active directory and enhanced call progress analysis for the outbound dialing component. "Cisco also owes its success in the contact center market to its ability to provide proof points and case studies that document cost savings and application benefits offered by the company's products," says Frost & Sullivan Industry Analyst Seema Lall. "The company's strategy of enabling switches and gateways to deliver quality of service for voice has helped position it very effectively for a converged network." Over a prolonged period, this efficiency has created an enormous installed base, particularly within the large enterprise segment. This segment is already network-ready for a converged infrastructure. Cisco's IP migration program has been a major success in greenfield and among existing ACD system users. The company has been successful in increasing its presence in the small-to-medium contact center market by using a predominantly indirect channel-based distribution strategy and by selling solutions bundled with other in-house enterprise products. The Competitive Strategy Leadership Award is given to the company that has used an effective competitive strategy for achieving significant gains in its market share. The award recognizes the timely introduction of methods used by the company for capturing and solidifying its market presence. Cisco achieved a 20 percent hike in the 2004 sales of its intelligent contact manager (ICM) CTI product. This growth saw the company significantly outpacing its competition in the CTI markets. Over the last two years, Cisco has considerably increased investments in its contact center product line -- both in the areas of product development and marketing. This success is partially due to its growing mind and market shares in the surging enterprise IP telephony space. The company has been marketing its ICM product as a software application that can provide a smooth migration path between time division multiplexing (TDM) and IP infrastructures while also offering the inherent CTI capabilities. All units reported by Cisco under the CTI category are currently sold into TDM-based switching environment. "The ICM product enjoys a solid installed base of large enterprise customers using network-level routing for geographically dispersed contact centers," says Lall. "As Cisco has enhanced this product, customers are receiving additional features and functionalities such as agent desktop, enhanced reporting, and customer relationship management (CRM) integration." In 2004, Cisco recorded several large customer wins in the CTI market. In terms of CRM integration, Cisco supports Seibel Systems, Inc., Oracle Corporation, and SAP AG with productized connectors and claims a growing practice with salesforce.com, Inc. This product investment, combined with a renewed focus on marketing in the Customer Contact Business Unit, has paid off with Cisco garnering a growing share of the market. About Frost & Sullivan Frost & Sullivan, a global growth consulting company, has been partnering with clients to support the development of innovative strategies for more than 40 years. The company's industry expertise integrates growth consulting, growth partnership services, and corporate management training to identify and develop opportunities. Frost & Sullivan serves an extensive clientele that includes Global 1000 companies, emerging companies, and the investment community by providing comprehensive industry coverage that reflects a unique global perspective and combines ongoing analysis of markets, technologies, econometrics, and demographics. For more information, visit http://www.frost.com/ . Contact: Stacie Jones 210.247.2450 [email protected] Frost & Sullivan CONTACT: Stacie Jones of Frost & Sullivan, +1-210-247-2450, [email protected] Web site: http://www.frost.com/ |