SAN JOSE, Calif., January 13, 2004 - Cisco Systems® today announced that the Cisco Internet Protocol (IP) Telephony system has been selected by Miercom as the overall winner of its prestigious IP PBX Review.

Miercom, a leading network consultancy and product test center http://www.miercom.com, compared the Cisco CallManager system, the core of its IP Communications system, with entries from Alcatel, Avaya and Nortel Networks. This test was for large-scale IP PBX systems capable of supporting 1,000 or more users. All four vendors were rated in six different categories: architecture, endpoints, management and administration, features, performance and security.

Cisco placed first in the phones, management and administration and performance categories to take the overall top honors in the review. In addition, Cisco placed second in architecture and security and third in the features category. The complete results of the review are available now in the January edition of Business Communications Review (BCR) magazine: Miercom IP PBX Review.

"Cisco took the lead in the (endpoints) category thanks to the breadth of its offerings, as well as some notable features and excellent phone design," according to the BCR report. In the management and administration category, the article states: "Cisco took the gold in this category. It's clear that the vendor has been doing its homework, and its management application has become one to beat in this market."

In the performance test, Cisco took top honors with its "excellent showing in voice quality" delivering toll quality voice and "100 percent call completion rate." Call completion was measured over a nine-hour time period in which the Cisco IP PBX handled thousands of repeated call setups and teardowns. None of the other vendors achieved 100 percent call completion.

"We congratulate Cisco on a clear win in the comparative testing of high-end IP telephony systems," said Ed Mier, president of Miercom. "Our testing is a comprehensive and rigorous evaluation and Cisco excelled in virtually all categories of the tests."

For Cisco, this accomplishment marks another major milestone for its IP Communications business.

"We have won what is widely considered the industry's top award for enterprise-class IP PBX systems," said Marthin De Beer, vice president and general manager of Cisco's IP Communications Business Unit. "It is a tremendous achievement and a testament to the overall quality and performance of our system developed by the seasoned voice team we have in place at Cisco. In less than five years we have experienced phenomenal growth and success. Last year, we shipped our 2 millionth IP phone and recently climbed to the number three position in the total United States PBX market, according to Infotech. That momentum coupled with the Miercom honors prove that we have a world class IP telephony system and are quickly moving ahead of traditional voice vendors in this growing market space."

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 about Cisco IP Communications is available at: http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/innovators/VoIP/index.html