Alcatel’s Genesys Named to Leader Quadrant of Analyst Firm’s 2005 IVR Systems and Enterprise Voice Portals Report

Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc., an Alcatel company (NYSE: ALA, Paris: CGEP.PA), announced today that market research firm Gartner, Inc. has named Genesys to the Leader Quadrant in its June, 2005 report titled, “Magic Quadrant for Interactive Voice Response (IVR) Systems and Enterprise Voice Portals, 2005”. The Magic Quadrant evaluates vendors on their completeness of vision and ability to execute, and includes criteria such as vendor and product capabilities, breadth and depth, and customer feedback.

In the report, Gartner analysts Bern Elliot and Drew Kraus refer to radical changes in best practices in self-service for the contact centre during the past three years and explain that deployment of a flexible voice response solution can result in cost savings and greater efficiency within a contact centre. The report states: “Organisations should review how they build and deploy applications in light of [recent] evolution in [self-service] architecture…because many legacy platforms are coming to the end of their lives.”

Genesys’ market presence is based on the success of its Genesys Voice Platform – an open-standards software solution that leads the industry for speech self-service technology. Genesys Voice Platform provides high performance call processing and media services for the development and deployment of voice applications – extending automated self-service far beyond the limits of traditional IVR capabilities.

Genesys offers an enterprise edition (for up to 500 ports) and a network edition (for more than 500 ports) of the Genesys Voice Platform, both which are IP-enabled. This helps address the voice response needs of enterprises of any size, while offering flexible IP migration solutions.

“IP functionality, a Web-based architecture, as well as speech and IVR features are all incorporated into the Genesys Voice Platform, creating a powerful set of self-service capabilities that can be used on a stand-alone basis or seamlessly integrated with the assisted-service components of the Genesys suite,” said Elliot Danziger, Genesys chief technology officer. “We believe being named to the Leader Quadrant of Gartner’s annual report for the second straight year is testament to the fact that Genesys offers a sound, scalable and technologically-advanced solution for the contact centre.”

Key capabilities of the Genesys Voice Platform include:

• Pure software solution – leverages open standards such as VoiceXML 2.0 and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) to make Web-based information available to customers over any telephone, while reducing development, deployment and operational costs.
• Seamless integration of self- and assisted-service – links to the full suite of Genesys call centre solutions, enabling companies to easily extend their customer service capabilities from automated to agent-supported transactions.
• Broad ecosystem of development partners and applications – platform supports best-of-breed applications and speech technologies in both custom-designed and packaged third-party solutions, allowing companies to gain faster time-to-benefit and reduced IT costs.
• Flexible deployment and scalability – fault-tolerant, distributed architecture enables customers to choose between deployments in front of or behind a PBX, as well as over IP or traditional TDM lines, and on-premise or as a managed service by telecom operators and service providers.

This announcement follows Gartner recently naming Genesys the top vendor in worldwide voice portal shipments by port in 2003.

Magic Quadrant Disclaimer:
The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted June 2005 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" Quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc:
Genesys, an Alcatel company, is 100 per cent focused on software for contact centres. Leading companies in the Global 2000 and Fortune 1000 use Genesys to deliver interactions that drive better business. With 3000 customers in 80 countries, Genesys directs more than 100 million customer interactions every day. Genesys allows enterprises to achieve key business objectives by tying together customer interactions, people, and customer information in both traditional telephony and IP environments. Sophisticated routing and reporting across voice, e-mail, documents and Web interactions, coupled with integrated self-service, ensure that customers are quickly connected to the right resource - the first time. Genesys solutions stop customer frustration and allow enterprises to deliver superior customer satisfaction and improved business results. For more information visit us at www.genesyslab.com.

About Alcatel:
Alcatel provides communications solutions to telecommunication carriers, Internet service providers and enterprises for delivery of voice, data and video applications to their customers or employees. Alcatel brings its leading position in fixed and mobile broadband networks; applications and services, to help its partners and customers build a user-centric broadband world. With sales of EURO 12.3 billion and 56,000 employees in 2004, Alcatel operates in more than 130 countries. For more information, visit Alcatel on the Internet: http://www.alcatel.com.