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VIEW FROM THE CORNER OFFICE
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2006 YEAR
IN REVIEW AND 2007 OUTLOOK
By Ari Sonesh, CEO
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2006 was a fantastic year for CosmoCom, a profitable year of fast growth and
positive cash flow, ending the year with a strong cash balance.
The company has closed several new deals with service providers, one of them the
largest deal in our history with a global first tier Telco. This important
milestone further strengthens our position as the dominant supplier of shared,
multi-tenant platforms that enable service providers to deliver Contact Center
technology as a service-on-demand (CCOD). What's more, 2006 also proved to be
the Year of Recognition from the Enterprise, acknowledging the vast benefits of
obtaining the technology from a network, resulting in repeat orders from
existing SP customers who are continuously adding capacity to their platforms.
2006 was also the year of acceptance of CosmoCom's innovative technology as the
"technology of choice" for large (thousands of seats), distributed Contact
Center and Call Center consolidation. This year we have clearly demonstrated
that this is the "sweet spot" for CosmoCom, and we can do a much better job than any of our competition. We have proven that our product can be installed and
service-ready much faster than any other technology on the market, delivering
superior functionality and business benefits. We have proven that the "unified"
platform is integral in lowering project risk and total cost of ownership. These
benefits are even further amplified in multi-application (multi-call center)
environments, where the enterprise is self hosting a multi-application
(multi-tenant) platform.
In 2006 CosmoCom launched a "Unified Customer Communications" campaign,
positioning ourselves as the leaders in this hot space. While "Unified
Communications" brings huge benefits and ROI to an enterprise, "Unified Customer
Communications" addresses interaction with the customers, directly impacting the
top line.
2006
saw our significant investment in the Americas in general, and in the USA in
particular. We are entering 2007 with a very strong sales organization led by
Ben Eisner, who joined mid year as the President of Americas. In EMEA (Europe,
Middle East and Africa), under the leadership of Ronald Rubens, among many
successes was the closure of the above mentioned very large Telco deal, and EMEA
put into operation a multi-thousand-seats call center in a national utility
company. The APAC (Asia Pacific) division, under the leadership of Meir Yaniv, has
signed another service provider, and won over a major telecom manufacturer who
will adapt the technology as a hosted platform for its customers.
CosmoCall
Universe Version 5 is our technology achievement highlight in 2006. Under the
management of Eyal Manor, our development team has delivered our latest product
generation, a true high-capacity and high-availability carrier-grade platform,
targeted specifically for Telcos and the Enterprises. As I wrote in this space
throughout the year, Eyal and his talented team did an extraordinary job of
delivering the highest quality, sophisticated functionality product, on time and with
the highest degree of stability. I am very proud of this amazing group
of individuals, and of CosmoCom's ability to consistently deliver the best
product in the industry.
2006
was also a year of investment in our support capabilities. We initiated a
customer survey program, enabling us to quickly and efficiently respond to our
customer needs...the results being a highly satisfied customer base. Among
different initiatives launched in 2006, was the implementation of a "customer
portal" which is receiving glowing reviews. I believe that our 7x24 support is
one of the best in the industry. Kudos to Steven Kaish, Natan Stein and their
very hard working and dedicated teams.
2006
was, for the market space, our partners and for CosmoCom, the Year of the
Inflection Point, and in 2007 I am expecting very fast growth. Doubling our
revenue this year is very feasible, with the biggest growth anticipated in
the USA. Of course the size of the organization must follow the revenue. We will
be investing across the board, in all the departments as well as in an expanded
marketing plan. Our focus in 2007 will continue to be on Service Providers for
CCOD applications and on the large enterprise consolidating its call centers and
creating virtual environments. To capitalize on the momentum created in 2006, we
are increasing our marketing budgets. Stay tuned to hear more about the
marketing initiatives masterminded by EVP Steve Kowarsky.
Last
but not least, I want to acknowledge the enormous contributions to CosmoCom's
overall success these past 10 years, and last year in particular, made by our CTO Steve Dellutri. Steve, thank you for a continued outstanding job!
To summarize...my prediction is that 2007 will be a very exciting year. I am
looking forward to the thrill of anticipated rapid growth, which has come to be
commonly known as the "tornado" (read "Inside the Tornado", an enlightening book
by Geoffrey Moore).
Through the year I will continue updating you on the Path of the Tornado, so
stay tuned...the forecast promises to be exhilarating!
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TOP
STORIES
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COSMOCOM AND BANDTEL PARTNER TO DELIVER
VOIP SAVINGS TO CONTACT CENTERS AND ENTERPRISES
At
the Internet Telephony show in Florida, CosmoCom announced that it has forged a
strategic partnership with BandTel, a leading worldwide provider of SIP Trunking
services, yielding tremendous potential savings for enterprise contact centers.
The combination of CosmoCom's all-IP unified customer communications platform
and BandTel's session initiation protocol (SIP) trunks will optimize the overall
cost structure of IP contact centers.
Read why this means savings and what an IDC analyst has to
say

JOIN US FOR COSMOCOMMUNITY 2007
Register Now at Early-Bird
Rates
Hard
to believe we're already well into the new year and only a few months away from
CosmoCommunity 2007. Have you registered for this unique, world-class event? If
not, don't delay? There is still time to take advantage of the
early-bird registration rate, but not for long.
Register Now.
The 2nd annual CosmoCommunity event will take place May 29 - June 1, 2007 on
Long Island in New York. Using attendee and sponsor feedback from CosmoCommunity
2006 as an indicator, 2007 will be an even bigger and better forum for learning,
sharing and networking that will help the entire CosmoCommunity prosper
together.
Sponsors are already coming on board. If you would like to sponsor
the event, please contact us at
cosmocommunity@cosmocom.com to request more information, or to reserve one
of the limited number of sponsorship slots.
We look forward to seeing you in May!

COSMOCOM RECEIVES TOP RECOGNITION FROM LEADING INDUSTRY
MAGAZINES
 CosmoCom has been recognized by two leading industry publications for
outstanding development of its CosmoCall Universe version 5.0 contact center
platform. Internet Telephony and Customer Inter@ction Solutions
each awarded their Product of the Year title to CosmoCom's CosmoCall Universe
version 5.0, dubbed the Unified Customer Communications (UCC) release for its
enhanced support of key elements of UCC. Editors selected the UCC platform for
its ability to provide quality and excellence in solutions that benefit the
customer experience as well as ROI for the companies that use it.
Read the full release.

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MORE DEVELOPMENTS |
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COSMOCOM VP OF DEVELOPMENT HONORED
Eyal Manor Receives Prestigious "40
Under 40" Award
Long Island Business News has recognized 40 rising stars under the age of 40
each year since 1998. A steering committee selects the group based on criteria
that includes professional success in business as an entrepreneur or in the
corporate world, business accomplishments and community involvement. The winners
are honored at an award breakfast and highlighted in a Long Island Business News
pull-out section.
This year's gala awards breakfast took place on January 25th at the Crest Hollow
Country Club in Woodbury, NY. The high-profile event attracted around 600
attendees, including a group of CosmoCom colleagues and executives who were
there to proudly support our own Vice President of Software Development, Eyal
Manor, as he received this prestigious honor.
Eyal is well deserving of the award. He brought more than a decade of
communications and real-time systems experience to his role at CosmoCom. He
built a state-of-the art software development team and methodologies that have
strengthened CosmoCom's position as the leading provider of carrier-grade
contact center platforms globally. And when he is not at the helm of his ace
team of developers, he volunteers his time mentoring Long Island high-tech
entrepreneurs as part of the LISTnet entrepreneurship program.
Congratulations Eyal from all of your friends at CosmoCom!

COSMOCOM DEVELOPER AMONG TOP 20 TECHIES
Eyal
Manor was not the only member of CosmoCom's first-class development team to
receive accolades recently. On December 9th, Eugene Keselman became the the
most-recent addition to the growing list of CosmoCom alumni recognized by
LISTnet as part of their annual Twenty Top Techies awards. The honor was marked
by an awards ceremony where Eugene and most of the development team were able to
take a break from the code to enjoy a good dinner and celebrate the
much-deserved honor.
Eugene has profound knowledge in search algorithms and implementation techniques
in relational databases including Microsoft SQL. He began working at CosmoCom in
2004 as a senior developer, but quickly became a team leader due to his vast
technical knowledge and experience. He had led a number of new developments in
CosmoCom's call center VoIP product, designing and implementing many of the
advanced web-based reporting services rolled out in 2006 that have had
immeasurable positive impact on our customers and end-users.
Congratulations Eugene!

SEE COSMOCOM AT CALL CENTER DEMO IN MIAMI
Miami,
Florida is a good place to be during the cold winter month of February. The
weather is a warm alternative to the typically cold winter and Miami is known
for it's beached and nightlife. But CosmoCom has one more great reason to be
there on February 22 and 23, 2007. On those dates please join CosmoCom at
booth E1 of ICMI's Call Center Demo and Conference. We'd love to
answer your questions about Contact Center On-Demand and Unified Customer
Communications and discuss how our leading IP contact center platform can
benefit your business.
The event takes place at the Hyatt Regency Miami Florida, 2007 and we'd like to
help with this
eVIP Guest pass for a $50 savings offer you can use for conference passes or to
waive the on-site "Hall Only" registration fee.
We look forward to seeing you in Miami!
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OTHER DEPARTMENTS |
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BITS & PIECES: SOME VOIP FACTOIDS
Some Analyst's Market Predictions
The Yankee Group puts the SMB VoIP market at $200 million last year,
growing to $1.3 billion in 2009.
The Dell'Oro Group predicts that the PBX market will exceed $7.5 billion
in 2011, with most of the growth coming from IP PBXs.
Global telecoms industry grows 11.2 percent in 2006
A recent article in Telecom Paper states that the global
telecommunications industry was worth USD 3 trillion last year, up 11.2 percent
from 2005, according to the Telecommunications Industry Association's annual
review. The US market grew 9.3 percent in 2006 to USD 923 billion in revenue,
its fastest growth rate since 2000. The European market was worth USD 1 trillion
last year, and Asia-Pacific contributed revenues of USD 715 billion, while
Africa and the Middle East had the fastest growth rate at 21.6 percent. The
industry group attributed the growth to strong demand and investment for
broadband services. By 2010, worldwide revenues are expected to reach USD 4.3
trillion.

WHO'S TALKING? RECENT
INK
CosmoCom Adds "Unified Customer Communications" To Enterprise UC
Art Rosenberg, principal analyst and founder of the Unified-View which focuses
on Unified Communications, recently took some time to interview Ben Eisner about
CosmoCom's place in this growing space. The result is the great article that
appeared in a number of online publications including Call Center Magazine
and Customer Inter@ction Solutions. The article clearly lays out, and
reinforces, CosmoCom's messages. Art's first paragraph alone is a great
testament to us, "We've known CosmoCom ever since they were founded in 1996 to
develop one of the first IP-based ACD systems in the industry. I was privileged
to be invited to give a presentation to their development team to highlight the
coming changes that the Web and email were bringing to traditional voice
oriented customer interactions. Even then, they had a remarkably complete vision
for applying what we now know as unified communication (UC) technology to
customer communications. " Read the article in
Call Center Magazine or
Customer Inter@ction Solutions.

HQ HAPPENINGS
Global Meetings an Energizing Start to
2007
Every year in early January, CosmoCom colleagues from around the
globe gather for our annual Global Sales Meeting (GSM)
and Global Sales Engineering Meeting (GSEM). Both events bring our widely distributed organization together
for several intense days of knowledge transfer, analysis and team
building.
This year was especially exciting coming off a very successful year (see
Ari's CEO Corner above) with an unprecedented level of awareness in the
market place, the recent launch of of CosmoCall Universe 5 and an expanded
organization that is primed to respond to the growing market need for on-demand
contact center solutions to satisfy enterprises unified customer communications
needs. With all that and more as fuel, everyone agreed that 2007 will be a
phenomenal year and the GSM and GSEM were just the forums to solidify the team
that will make that happen.
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The week started with the GSM where the theme was "The time is
Now!" Many long-time colleagues, and a surprisingly large number of
new faces, shared success stories and best practices, analyzed and
strategized ways to better server our customers and prospects and
reminded ourselves just why CosmoCom is at the forefront of unified
customer communications and why CosmoCall Universe is the platform
of choice for so many top-tier telcos around the world. To support
that, we were fortunate to have Frank Shaffer, Director Global Voice
Services, BT Global Services, energize the group with a presentation
about BT's success with CosmoCall Universe.
The second half of the week our international and domestic sales
engineers got together for the GSEM (Global Sales
Engineering Meeting) where the delved into the more technical
nature of our product, especially the recent CCU 5 release and
shared practical knowledge for better implementations and creative
customer applications of our technology.
Both events had a healthy dose of fun to strengthen bonds among
the groups with a rousing bowling competition at the GSM and a
several energetic (if not painful) rounds of paintball at the GSEM.
We're looking forward to all the success stories that we will be able to
share a year from now!

NEW
MEMBERS OF THE COSMOCOM FAMILY
CosmoCom Americas
Steve Jackson joined CosmoCom in January as VP Sales CosmoCom Americas,
and is based on the Atlanta area. Steve is formerly from Concerto/Aspect, EShare
Communications/Divine. Holding a B.S., Computer Science, Steve is a graduate of
the the University of Central Florida
Daniel Doroshkin joined CosmoCom on January 8th as a Systems Engineer.
Daniel comes to us with 8 years of engineering experience. He is Microsoft
Certified Professional and recently worked for VoIP gateway manufacturer Quintum
Technologies, Inc. Daniel brings with him many years of experience with VoIP
gateways, voice and data network engineering as well as network and windows
administration. A graduate of the University of Mechanics and Optics St.
Petersburg, Russia, Daniel holds both
Mike Odenwald is CosmoCom's new Regional Sales Director for the US
Mid-Atlantic Region, and is based on the Philadelphia area. Formerly with AT&T
and Aspect Communications, Mike holds a BS from the College of New Jersey.
CosmoCom Japan
Takeshi Ishii, joined our Japan team in January. Ishii-san has extensive
experience in the Contact Center industry in Japan, having worked for Genesys,
Concerto ( Aspect, today ), and Japanese Systems Integrators. Fluent in both
Japanese and English, Ishii-san majored in physics at the Science University of
Tokyo.

TRADESHOW NEWS: COMING ATTRACTIONS
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CosmoCommunity 2007
May 30 - June 1, 2007
Hyatt Wind Watch Hotel and Resort
Hauppauge, NY,
USA
FIND OUT
MORE AND REGISTER NOW! |
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Call Center 2.0
January 23-26, 2007
Broward County Convention Center
Fort Lauderdale, FL, USA
http://www.tmcnet.com/voip/conference/call-center/ See CosmoCom in Booth
1028 |
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Call Center Demo & Conference
February 22-23, 2007
Hyatt Regency Miami
Miami, FL
http://www.callcenterdemo.com See CosmoCom at Pedestal E1 |
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CallCenterWorld 2007
February 27 - March 1, 2007
Estrel Convention Center
Berlin, Germany
http://www.callcenterworld.de/
Visit CosmoCom in Booth
Hall 1, Booth 1A1 |
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RECORDED WEBINARS
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View recordings of our Webinar events
including "Hosted Contact Center for Outsourcers", "Contact
Center On-Demand" and "Telecom Customer Care"
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CosmoCom,
Inc.
121 Broad Hollow Rd.
Melville, NY 11747
+1 631 940-4200
http://www.cosmocom.com
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