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Avistar Delivers Desktop Video Integrated With IBM Lotus Sametime to Improve Collaboration and Increase Productivity

Posted on: Thursday, 18 January 2007, 09:00 CST

Avistar Communications Corp. (NASDAQ:AVSR), a video collaboration platform provider, today announced the release of its desktop video integration with IBM Lotus Sametime 7.5. With this integration, Avistar users can incorporate high-quality, "face-to-face" collaboration into daily business processes to help increase employee productivity and solve complex business challenges quickly and effectively.

Avistar's video integration with Lotus Sametime 7.5 enables one-click video calling from the Lotus Sametime contact list. Users can right-click on the name of a Lotus Sametime contact to immediately start a one-on-one video call and click on additional names to expand the call to multi-party. This integration allows employees to transition easily from instant messaging chat to visual interaction, using a variety of collaboration tools to quickly solve the business challenge at hand.

Additional functionality available to Avistar users includes:

Interactive Broadcasting: Delivers meetings and presentations in real-time to large audiences;

Content Creation and Publishing: Provides easy recording, playback and distribution of video clips via multiple channels including email or the Web;

Data Sharing: Allows collaboration on documents or graphics during a call.

Avistar will demonstrate its integration with Lotus Sametime 7.5 at Lotusphere 2007, Jan. 22-24, in Orlando, Florida. Future Avistar integrations are expected to enable users to view a contact's video availability using the Lotus Sametime contact list, embed video into the Lotus Sametime user interface and video-enable Lotus Sametime web conferencing.

"Visual communication can help establish an environment where people interact more seamlessly, without the disjointed situation that often occurs within asynchronous communication tools," said Mike Gotta, principal analyst with Burton Group. "Embedding such communication services within the context of collaborative applications allows users to more spontaneously share ideas in ways likely to enhance employee and business performance."

"In today's global workplace, businesses frequently maintain workforces located at headquarters and in satellite and home offices around the world," said Gerald J. Burnett, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Avistar. "To successfully navigate this distributed environment, organizations must implement state-of-the art collaboration tools such as Sametime 7.5. By adding visual communication to Lotus Sametime, we're helping people make complex, split-second decisions, which require the real-time, nuanced communications that can only occur 'face-to-face.'"

As an IBM industry-optimized Business Partner, Avistar has worked with IBM to develop a series of video solutions including:

Expert Advisor: Enhances customer satisfaction and increases lead closure rates by providing immediate video access to licensed product experts not on-site at the time of a customer inquiry;

Business Continuity Management: Lowers operational risk and reduces lost productivity by delivering effective visual communication during work disruptions caused by a range of events including crises (pandemic, natural disaster or terrorist attack) and day-to-day travel and commute delays (increased security, transportation strikes and inclement weather);

Business Unit Productivity: Heightens organizational productivity and the quality of decision-making by providing clearer, more nuanced visual communication within workforces that frequently span time zones and cultures.

Avistar has been named a 2006 Lotus Advisor Editor's Choice Award winner in the Collaboration: Virtual Meeting category and 2005 finalist for the prestigious IBM Lotus Chief Technology Officer Award for its integration with Workplace Managed Client™ technology.

Avistar's integration with Lotus Sametime 7.5 is now available. For more information, visit www.avistar.com. To view a video demonstration of Avistar's integration with Lotus Sametime 7.5, please visit www.avistar.com/assets/media/sametime_plugin_demo.wmv.

About Avistar Communications Corporation

Avistar Communications Corporation develops, markets, and supports a video collaboration platform for the enterprise, all powered by the AvistarVOS™ software. From the desktop, Avistar delivers business-quality video calling, recording, publishing to web and e-mails, video-on-demand, broadcast origination and distribution, and document sharing. Avistar video-enables business processes by integrating visual communications into the daily workflow and connecting communities of users within and across enterprises. Founded in 1993, Avistar is headquartered in Redwood Shores, California, with offices in New York and London. Avistar's technology is used in more than 35 countries.

Collaboration Properties, Inc. (CPI), a wholly owned subsidiary of Avistar Communications Corporation, was founded in 1997. CPI develops patents for presence-based interactions, wireless communications, desktop video, recorded and live media at the desktop, multimedia documents, data sharing, and a service-rich video network architecture. It holds a current portfolio of 74 patents for inventions in the primary areas of video and network technology. CPI offers licenses to its patent portfolio and Avistar's video-enabling technologies to companies in the video conferencing, rich-media services, public networking, and related industries. Current licensees include Sony Corporation, Polycom, Inc., and Emblaze-VCON.

Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements including statements regarding the availability, performance, impact and benefits of Avistar's suite of video applications and the integration of such applications with other products. Such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially, including such factors, among others, as technical difficulties, difficulties and delays in completion of the integration process, the development of competitive technology and solutions and delays in adoption or acceptance of video collaboration technology. We refer you to the documents that Avistar files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, in particular the section entitled "Risk Factors" in Avistar's annual report on Form 10-K and its quarterly reports on Forms 10-Q.

Copyright (c) 2007 Avistar Communications Corporation. All rights reserved. Avistar, AvistarVOS™, and the Avistar logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Avistar Communications Corporation. IBM, Lotus, Workplace and Sametime are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries or both. All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.

Source: Business Wire

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