SYDNEY - October 28, 2004 - Cisco Systems, ® announced today it has now shipped more than 170,000 Internet Protocol (IP) phones to more than 500 customers across a diverse cross-section of industries in Australia.

For the first time, Cisco has become the market leader in all business telephony, as well as increasing its lead in IP telephony.

According to analysis by Frost & Sullivan, in a recent report titled "Asia Pacific Enterprise Telephony Equipment Markets - 2004, First Half," Cisco now leads the business telephony market in Australia, with a 19.9 percent market share. The study covers all phones systems sold to businesses, including key telephone systems, traditional Private Branch Exchange (PBX), IP enabled PBX and Pure-IP telephony.

In IP Telephony, Cisco continues to be the leading vendor in the Australian business voice market, holding a 47 percent market share, according to Frost & Sullivan.

Cisco Australia and New Zealand managing director, Ross Fowler, said Australian businesses are abandoning the inefficient PBX-based telephony and are adopting feature-rich IP systems to reduce operational costs and enable productivity enhancing applications, beyond dial tone.

Mr Fowler said; "The trend towards IP based communications is irreversible, and it is shown in the market analysis by Frost and Sullivan. Cisco only plays in pure-IP Telephony but we lead the market in all business telephony. Australia is the first global market where Cisco has achieved total business telephony leadership."

Foad Fadaghi, Senior Industry Analyst with Frost & Sullivan Australia, said the market for IP Telephony continues to grow strongly in Australia and enterprises are becoming more sophisticated in their usage of IP communications

"Australian businesses are now entering a new phase of IP-based efficiency as previously disparate communications systems continue to converge, improving the user experience by bringing together voice mail, e-mail, video conferencing and increasingly vertical and enterprise applications," Mr Fadaghi said.

Cisco's channel reseller specialisation program, which requires significant training and resource allocation from Cisco's 28 Australian channel partners, also helps ensure that IP Telephony rollouts are designed and deployed to aim for high levels of customer satisfaction.

Cisco has more than 500 customers using IP Telephony in Australia. Cisco's customers in this market include Freehills legal service, Woodside, Servcorp, AMP, Lend Lease and Arnott's. Cisco has now sold more than three million IP phones across the world.