SAN JOSE, Calif., November 16, 2004 - Cisco Systems today announced the sale of its 4 millionth Cisco Internet Protocol (IP) telephone to fashion apparel and accessories icon Liz Claiborne Inc., a milestone that demonstrates Cisco's continuing acceleration in the enterprise voice market.

"It took us 4-and-a-half years to sell our first 2 million IP phones and only 14 months to climb from 2 million to 4 million phones sold to customers," said Barry O'Sullivan, vice president and general manager for Cisco's IP Communications Business Unit. "The 4 million milestone that we achieved in October this year, confirms our leadership in the enterprise voice market and demonstrates the rapid market acceleration we are driving in this space. It also points to growing customer adoption of our IP Communications system."

Cisco currently has more than 45 IP Communications customers with 5,000 or more Cisco IP phones installed, which is more than any other vendor in the market today.

Cisco IP Communications has been in place at Liz Claiborne since 2003 and includes more than 4,000 Cisco IP phones in its New York and New Jersey-based corporate offices. The system has yielded substantial employee productivity gains and operational cost saving benefits for Liz Claiborne.

Extension Mobility Equals Productivity

With Cisco Extension Mobility, a built-in feature of the Cisco CallManager IP telephony system, Liz Claiborne employees can log on to any Cisco IP Phone in up to eight different locations and personalize it with their own telephone number, preferences and directories. For example, executives who attend meetings at another Liz Claiborne office can log on to a Cisco 7960 IP Phone in a conference room and use their personalized message access button to retrieve messages from the Cisco Unity^TM voice messaging system, just as if they were in their own office.

"Extension Mobility is a boon for productivity," said Anthony Iadisernia, director of information technology for Liz Claiborne Inc. "Our people travel back and forth between offices and productivity is lost when they sit in another office all day while their voicemail box fills up. Now they can log in from any office location and respond more quickly to urgent business." In addition, executives no longer maintain two phone numbers, one for each office they frequent, and no longer need to check two different voicemail boxes. The company is also taking advantage of several Extensible Markup Language (XML) applications on its IP phones, including news, weather, and stock information; white and yellow pages; a calendar and Cisco Conference Connection to make scheduling and attending conference calls faster and easier.

Cisco IPCC Express Improves Customer Service

The Cisco IP Contact Center (IPCC) Express solution, which runs on Cisco CallManager servers, enables Liz Claiborne customer service operations to provide more efficient and personalized customer assistance. One contact center, with approximately 50 agents, receives questions from retail customers and sales managers across all product lines including apparel, accessories, cosmetics, etc. The other is a help desk with 20 agents who handle technical issues related to end-user and retail stores. Using Cisco IPCC Express, Liz Claiborne's information technology group has assigned higher priority to calls from executives and distribution centers so that the company does not put critical business issues on hold. In addition, the company has adjusted its help desk staffing at different times of the day to reduce wait times and abandon rates, thanks to the integrated metrics and reports in Cisco IPCC Express.

Support for Telecommuters

Telecommuters use Cisco 831 Ethernet broadband routers with their Cisco IP Phone 7960s to access the same Cisco CallManager telephony features from their homes as their peers at headquarters, including personalized voicemail and in-company caller identification. This gives the company more freedom to hire people who otherwise could not commute to the office because of distance, preference or disability.

Cisco VT Advantage Personalizes Business

Liz Claiborne is currently testing Cisco VT Advantage, which adds video telephony capabilities to Cisco IP phones. "Our business is very personal, very people-oriented," said John Kovac, vice president of information technology for Liz Claiborne Inc. "It's invaluable to have a face-to-face conversation when you're talking about or showing an item of clothing. With VT Advantage, we'll retain the face-to-face aspect of our culture even as we cut travel time and expense."

During the next two or three years, Liz Claiborne will continue to roll out IP telephony to its offices worldwide. "Cisco IP Communications is our standard for any new locations and for all voice-over-IP equipment," Kovac said.

About Cisco IP Communications

Cisco IP Communications is a comprehensive system of enterprise-class solutions including IP telephony, unified communications, rich media IP audio and videoconferencing, IP video broadcasting and customer contact solutions that take advantage of customers' existing Cisco IP infrastructure to deliver new, converged applications. More information is available at: www.cisco.com/go/ipc.

About Liz Claiborne Inc.

Liz Claiborne Inc. designs and markets an extensive range of fashion apparel and accessories for women, men, teens, children and infants. The company also markets fragrances for women and men. The 36 brands in the Liz Claiborne Inc. portfolio are available at over 30,000 points of sale worldwide. www.lizclaiborneinc.com

About Cisco Systems

Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO), the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet, this year celebrates 20 years of commitment to technology innovation, industry leadership, and corporate social responsibility. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, please go to: http://newsroom.cisco.com.

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