PERSIST Technologies Reaches More Prospects With PlaceWare, Saving Thousands Per Sales Call

REDMOND, Wash., May 12, 2003 — PlaceWare Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft Corp and a Real-Time Collaboration Solutions provider, today announced that PERSIST Technologies Inc. ( http://www.persistcorp.com/ ), a provider of data storage solutions that simplify storage, reduce costs and empower users with immediate access to critical information assets, uses PlaceWare to conduct sales presentations and demonstrations, and it is saving thousands per sales call.

“As a young company, we have to make every dollar count, and PlaceWare helps us leverage all our resources to the fullest — time, personnel and budget,” said Gary Lyng, vice president of product management and alliances for PERSIST Technologies. “We can manage time and distance with PlaceWare because no longer must we hop on a plane to visit with every prospective customer. … There’s no costly downtime for the customer or us with PlaceWare.”

Because some of PERSIST’s prospective customers are in the financial and government arenas, security is of the utmost importance. PlaceWare makes it easy to handle firewall issues, enabling PERSIST to communicate and demonstrate enterprise products without having to worry about security clearances, which would otherwise be required by most of its prospects.

“We use PlaceWare daily to present and demonstrate our product to sales prospects, and it’s truly just not feasible for PERSIST to do a demo without PlaceWare Web conferencing,” Lyng said. “When you consider that we can demo in an hour at a cost of $20 to multiple users in multiple locations, and compare that with the cost of a trip to the East Coast, where many of our customers and prospects are located, a PlaceWare session is the winner hands down.”

Thanks to PlaceWare, PERSIST now can demonstrate its storage solutions remotely, enabling it to show customers confidential prototypes and concepts while they’re in development. This allows PERSIST to gain valuable customer insights and feedback early in the development cycle.

“The customer feels a part of the product design because they’ve influenced it at a very early stage,” Lyng said. “Without sacrificing our development schedule, we’ve gained real-time feedback early enough to meet the needs of the market at the right time.”

Quality and usability also were important to PERSIST when it came to choosing a Web conferencing provider. “We looked at PlaceWare’s major competitor to compare the quality of the images and the presentations,” Lyng said. “We found the usability and quality of PlaceWare to be far better. It’s easier to share the desktop with zero degradation of what we’re presenting to the remote parties.”

“PlaceWare is pleased to be working with young companies such as PERSIST that need to make the most of all their resources,” said Dustin Grosse, senior director of marketing for PlaceWare. “PERSIST needs a Web conferencing solution that offers security technology for both it and its customers, and PlaceWare fills the bill by being the most secure, most reliable Web conferencing service available.”

About PERSIST Technologies Inc.

PERSIST Technologies Inc. is the leader in storage appliance software and solutions that significantly simplify storage and lower the total cost of ownership, while empowering enterprises with immediate and intelligent access to critical information assets. The company’s innovative, exponentially scalable, and application-agnostic technology architecture provides a new and exceedingly effective paradigm for managing information growth. PERSIST solutions optimize business productivity, market responsiveness and competitive advantage, while providing legal and regulatory compliance protections. PERSIST serves the global 2000, government, financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, engineering, communication and media industries. For more information about PERSIST Technologies, visit http://www.persistcorp.com/ or call (925) 474-2100 to reach the company’s Pleasanton, Calif., headquarters.

About PlaceWare Inc.

PlaceWare Inc., a Microsoft company, is a leader in real-time, “carrier class,” multimedia platform and application services for Web-based communication and collaboration, both inside and outside corporate firewalls. Enterprise customers prefer PlaceWare Web conferencing because of its scalable, reliable and secure browser-based architecture, which is based on technology developed and tested at Xerox PARC. The company offers unparalleled performance for all types of Web-based communications, from large-scale meetings with up to thousands of attendees, through small collaborative meetings, presentations and e-learning sessions. Founded in 1996, PlaceWare has already attracted more than 3,500 leading organizations that see Web conferencing as a natural evolution in helping their businesses compete more effectively in the global marketplace. PlaceWare Inc. helps companies host thousands of simultaneous Web meetings simply using Web browsers and telephones. For more information about PlaceWare visit http://www.placeware.com/ or call (888) 526-6170 to reach the company’s Mountain View, Calif., headquarters.

PlaceWare Inc. and the PlaceWare logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of PlaceWare Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. PlaceWare Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft Corp.

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