SAN JOSE, Calif., June 8, 2005 - Cisco Systems, Inc. today announced that the company's increased focus on systems integration is resulting in measurable customer and market success in IP Communications applications. By integrating security and voice components with its latest IP Communications solutions, Cisco is providing a higher level of security, making solution deployments faster and more cost-effective and improving user productivity. Enterprise customers and medium-sized businesses can deploy these new features using the new Cisco Unity system, release 4.05, while smaller businesses and branch offices can enjoy secure integration using Cisco Unity Express version 2.1 with Cisco 2800 and 3800 Integrated Services Routers.

"Cisco Unity definitely makes financial sense," says Bernie Rodriguez, IT Manager for Texas Instruments, a 20,000 user Cisco Unity deployment. "According to our initial estimates, the system attained a positive ROI less than one year after the initial deployment. In the next two to three years, we expect to see very significant cost savings in TI's overall messaging costs."

Combining its knowledge of encryption and networking with its experience in voice technology, Cisco now offers several increased security capabilities within its IP Communications portfolio. With Cisco Unity version 4.05, voice application users now have more confidentiality by using secure, private messaging. For no additional charge, voice media and signaling are encrypted so that messages cannot be listened to except by the intended recipient.

With Cisco Unity Express version 2.1, networked, multi-site organizations will benefit from key features such as system broadcast messaging for critical system-wide messaging and Voice Protocol for Internet Mail (VPIM) networking to Cisco Unity Express systems, providing for more flexible and cost-effective deployment options. Enterprises can now use centralized Cisco Unity at their corporate headquarters with Cisco Unity Express running out of their branch offices, allowing voicemail systems to seamlessly exchange messages. This can vastly increase a company's productivity by helping employees retrieve messages more quickly than in the past, taking fewer steps to retrieve those messages and at the same time, reducing total cost of ownership because the systems are integrated.

"Churches don't have big budgets, so we need to be especially focused on productivity and cost-savings," said John Shamblin, head pastor, Briarwood Baptist Church. "We are saving money on maintenance by using our router with Cisco Unity Express and Cisco CallManager to manage our phone system ourselves and we are more productive. Before we had Cisco Unity Express, our staff used to answer every phone call in person. Now we're able to use voicemail to provide directions, service times and event announcements to callers. We're even using our IP Communications solution to converge information from classroom teachers onto the network so they can track weekly attendance - something that just wasn't possible with our legacy phone system."

The Cisco Unity unified messaging solution strongly supports migration to open standards. With the addition of Internet Mail Access Protocol (IMAP) client access license options, the benefits of Cisco Unity can now be extended to organizations using IMAP-based email systems for PC access to all Cisco Unity voicemail messages within their email client. Cisco Unity for Domino customers, just like Cisco Unity for Exchange customers, will now be able to implement failover for resiliency and redundancy and leverage dual-switch integration and message interoperability for migration from TDM-based systems to a converged network.

Cisco continues to find new ways to integrate voice messaging applications to drive productivity. "Cisco Unity improves productivity by enabling our power users such as sales executives to disseminate information to large groups in their regions," continued Rodriguez. "In Europe, it enables users to consolidate their voice messages from their mobile phones into their mailbox for quicker access to communications. It's also improved our responsiveness as an IT organization."

Cisco is also increasing productivity, security and virtualization by adding more fax capabilities into its IP Communications applications suite. The company now offers Cisco Unity Fax server, based on the Captaris RightFax 9.0 Enterprise Suite, which integrates fax into data, voice and desktop applications.

For more information, visit: www.cisco.com/go/ipcnew