SAN JOSE, Calif., May 8, 2006 - Cisco Systems announced today that Technology Marketing Corporation's (TMC®) Customer Inter@ction Solutions® magazine (www.cismag.com) has named Cisco the recipient of a 2006 Speech Technology Excellence Award for its innovative Cisco Customer Voice Portal solution. Customer Inter@ction Solutions has been the leading publication in customer relationship management, call centers and teleservices since 1982.

The Cisco Customer Voice Portal is a flexible and cost-effective speech-based replacement for traditional interactive voice response (IVR) systems. The Customer Voice Portal is the only self-service voice response solution available today that allows organizations to centrally manage a virtual, network-wide IVR system across multiple locations using a single application instance. Cisco's unique, flexible architecture saves deployment and administration costs and simplifies ongoing management and operation.

"Customer self-service has long been proven to provide both cost savings and efficiency improvements for the contact center. Now companies can reap even greater benefits by using speech-based systems to improve service quality and deliver a more satisfying customer experience," said John Hernandez, director of product management for Cisco's customer contact business unit. "This award is further testament to the value that Cisco Customer Voice Portal delivers for customer service and support."

The 2006 Speech Technology Excellence Award recognizes companies that have developed innovative speech technology solutions to help improve the bottom line.

"Speech technology is becoming more prevalent-not only in telephony-based applications, but also in hand-held computers, kiosks and mobile applications. The 2006 Speech Technology Excellence award winners give their customers a competitive advantage over contact centers failing to embrace speech solutions," said Nadji Tehrani, executive group publisher and editor-in-chief of Customer Inter@ction Solutions.

Cisco demonstrated to the editors of Customer Inter@ction Solutions that the innovative Customer Voice Portal is a leader in the burgeoning speech-technology industry. The Cisco Customer Voice Portal has also proven to be of high quality and usability as well as superior in the strength and breadth of its feature set.

The Speech Technology Excellence Awards were published in the April 2006 issue of Customer Inter@ction Solutions magazine.

About TMC

Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC) publishes four print magazines: Customer Interaction Solutions, Internet Telephony, SIP Magazine and IMS Magazine; as well as the digital publications, Speech-World, WiFI Telephony Magazine, VoIP Developer, IPTV Magazine and WiMAX Magazine. TMC also produces TMCnet, the world's leading communications and technology Web site. TMC is also the first publisher to test new products in its own on-site laboratories, TMC Labs. TMC produces INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO, The VoIP Developer Conference, Speech-World Conference, IP Contact Center Summit and The Global Call Center Outsourcing Summit. TMCnet, ranked among the top 2,500 Web sites in the World by Alexa.com, publishes more than 20 topical online newsletters. For more information about TMC, visit http://www.tmcnet.com.