CMP's VoiceCon® Orlando 2008 Announces Keynote Lineup and New Areas of Focus; Registration Now Open

VoiceCon®, produced by CMP, today announced keynotes and featured focus for VoiceCon Orlando 2008. The lineup includes Louis D'Ambrosio, President & CEO, Avaya; Dennis Schmidt, Senior Vice President, VoIP Program Executive, Bank of America; Mike Rhodin, General Manager, Workplace, Portal and Collaboration Software, IBM; Sue Bostrom, Executive Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer, Global Policy and Governmental Affairs, Cisco; and Gurdeep Singh Pall, Corporate Vice President, Unified Communications Group, Microsoft. VoiceCon Orlando 2008 will be held March 17-20 at the Gaylord Palms Hotel in Orlando, FL. Registration for the event is now open at http://www.voicecon.com/orlando.

This year VoiceCon Orlando widens its scope beyond IP Telephony to the broader enterprise communications market, and will focus on how enterprises are leveraging their new IP Telephony platforms with applications that increase revenues and improve productivity and customer satisfaction. There will be a special spotlight on customer case studies in critical vertical markets such as health, finance, higher education, government and manufacturing. The main stage and breakout sessions will be full of customer case studies with IT executives describing what they did, why they did it, the lessons learned and, most importantly, why it matters.

"This is not your father's VoiceCon," said Fred Knight, VoiceCon General Manager. "There is no longer a single migration path to IP Telephony, Unified Communications and Converged Networks. This year we'll take a look at what's new and cutting edge, what it means to enterprise communications, and ask the pioneers to describe their latest strategies. At this critical time in the migration, VoiceCon Orlando will give the industry a good indication of how far we've come -- and what's coming next."

In addition to case studies, the keynotes at VoiceCon Orlando will also feature top executives from the leading industry vendors describing their vision for and experience with IP Telephony and convergence. The keynote lineup includes:

  --  Lou D'Ambrosio, President and CEO, Avaya, will discuss the
      transformation of Unified Communications, focusing on how technology
      solutions of communications-enabling business processes are driving
      competitive advantage and innovation; Tuesday, March 18.

  --  Gurdeep Singh Pall, Corporate Vice President, Unified Communications
      Group, Microsoft, will describe how software is reshaping the
      realities of enterprise communications and present Microsoft's vision
      of how people-centric communications can be achieved; Tuesday, March
      18.

  --  Dennis Schmidt, Senior Vice President, VoIP Program Manager, Bank of
      America, will describe the Bank's migration to IP Telephony, which is
      one of the largest deployments to date -- nearly 100,000 stations have
      migrated to IP Telephony. Schmidt will cover both technological and
      organizational challenges that the Bank faced, and describe what's
      next on the migration agenda; Tuesday, March 18.

  --  Mike Rhodin, General Manager, Workplace, Portal and Collaboration
      Software, IBM, will share the latest on IBM's Unified Communications
      and collaboration strategy and preview new technologies from IBM
      development labs. Rhodin will illustrate how enterprises can and are
      building upon their existing technology investments and how they are
      tapping solutions from a rich ecosystem of business partners to add
      value to their organizations; Wednesday, March 19.

  --  Sue Bostrom, Executive Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer, Global
      Policy and Governmental Affairs, Cisco, along with special guests,
      will discuss why an open, network-based architecture enables and
      ensures true collaboration, and the role that communications plus
      collaboration plays in building a world that is better and more
      sustainable for the future; Wednesday, March 19.

VoiceCon is both a conference and an exhibition, and the VoiceCon Orlando 2008 exhibition floor is the only venue to feature all of the leading companies in the IP Telephony and converged communications industry, providing attendees with an unmatched opportunity to meet with leading vendors to solve their IP Telephony and enterprise communications needs. The list of VoiceCon Orlando 2008 sponsors includes Avaya, 3COM, Aastra Intecom, AT&T, Cisco, Extreme Networks, Foundry Networks, IBM, Microsoft, Mitel, Motorola, NEC Unified Solutions, Nokia, Nortel, Shoretel, Siemens Communications, Inc., Sprint, Verizon, 8x8, Inc., 911 Enable, Alcatel-Lucent, American Power Conversion, Avaya Developer Connection, AVST, BCR Training, Blackberry, CA, Inc., Calabrio Software, Dimansion Data, Ericsson, Inc., Interactive Intelligence, Plantronics, Polycom, Psytechnics, Samsung, Tandberg and Vertical Communications.

About VoiceCon®

Now in its 18th year, VoiceCon® is the leading conference and exhibition for enterprise IP Telephony, Converged Networks and Unified Communications in North America. VoiceCon® brings enterprise decision makers together with the industry's vendors, analysts and consultants to focus on the issues central to enterprise networks and communications. As the momentum toward IP Telephony and convergence has grown, VoiceCon has expanded to include two yearly shows: VoiceCon Orlando, March 17-20, 2008, at the Gaylord Palms Hotel, and VoiceCon San Francisco, at Moscone North Convention Center in San Francisco, November 10-12, 2008. VoiceCon Orlando was recently named one of Tradeshow Week's Fastest 50, a distinguished award recognizing the fastest-growing tradeshows. The event was honored with this distinction for show growth between 2004 and 2006. The VoiceCon portfolio also includes the VoiceCon Tour, which will take place from May to June 2008 in various locations across the U.S. and Canada. VoiceCon has launched No Jitter, (http://www.nojitter.com/), providing daily blogging and analysis of the enterprise IP-Telephony, Unified Communications and Converged Networking world. VoiceCon also serves the community with two weekly email newsletters -- VoiceCon eNews (http://www.voicecon.com/enews) and VoiceCon UC eWeekly (http://www.voicecon.com/unified-communications/); and the VoiceCon Webinar Series. For more information, visit http://www.voicecon.com/.

About CMP

CMP (http://www.cmp.com/) is a media and marketing solutions company serving the technology industry. With the leading online, event and print brands in all technology market categories, and with services and tools that reach beyond traditional advertising, CMP shapes and influences the technology industry worldwide. CMP publishes highly respected media brands such as TechWeb, InformationWeek, ChannelWeb, CRN, EE Times and TechOnline; produces major industry events such as Interop, Web 2.0 Expo, XChange, Game Developer Conference and the Embedded Systems Conferences; and provides business information and marketing services such as the International Customer Management Institute, Semiconductor Insights and Second Life consulting for technology marketers. CMP is a subsidiary of United Business Media (http://www.unitedbusinessmedia.com/), a global provider of news distribution and specialist information services with a market capitalization of more than $3 billion. For more CMP news, go to cmp.com/news.

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