CosmoCom Offers Utility Pricing to Service Providers

New Plan Boosts ROI of Contact Center On-Demand Service

MELVILLE, NY – February 2, 2004 – CosmoCom today introduced an innovative utility pricing plan for service providers that acquire and operate CosmoCom’s platform for hosted contact center on-demand (CCOD) services. With utility pricing, service providers will pay CosmoCom for actual usage after that usage has occurred, with minimum initial investment in the service-enabling technology. The new pricing will help service providers to profitably offer utility pricing to their customers.

CosmoCom, which specializes in providing CCOD platforms to service providers, has long argued that the ability to pay for actual usage as it occurs rather than paying for peak usage in advance is a major part of the end customer financial case for CCOD services. Datamonitor CRM Analyst Peter Ryan agrees, calling CCOD "the fastest growth area in the contact center market in the next five years," and explaining that "the primary driver for this will be the ability to move from capital to operational expenditure." Ryan predicts that "organizations will demand more ‘pay per use’ pricing," and utility pricing from CosmoCom will help service providers respond to this demand and demonstrate a compelling ROI for CCOD without risk to their own financial well being. The program is designed so that service providers can set end customer prices that make a very attractive alternative to investing in a premise-based system.

The utility pricing program includes two basic modes – metered, and unmetered. Under the metered plan, actual platform usage is measured by the minute. With metered usage, the number of concurrent agents or IVR ports is irrelevant. Only the total minutes of use matters. Under the unmetered plan, agent positions and IVR sessions are licensed for unlimited use during a month. The peak number of concurrent unmetered agents and IVR ports during a month determines the cost for that month.

The two methods, metered and unmetered, can be blended, so that a CCOD customer might, for example, define all of its full-time and multiple-shift agent positions as "unmetered" and all of its part-time agent positions as "metered." No minimum commitments of quantity and term are required to qualify for utility pricing, although making such commitments can earn greater discounts.

Agent pricing depends on agent media skills and volume. In both modes, multimedia agents that can receive telephone calls, voice messages, e-mails, and internet chats cost more than single-media agents dedicated to just one of these interaction types. Multimedia agents are more productive than single-media agents, and this productivity gain justifies their higher cost.

"This announcement demonstrates CosmoCom’s strong commitment to On-Demand services in the contact center arena," commented Ari Sonesh, CosmoCom’s Chairman and CEO. "CosmoCom is dedicated to making On-Demand hosted services a viable alternative to premise-based contact centers. This commitment includes both our technology and our pricing policies. We are introducing On-Demand pricing because we believe it will contribute to the growth and success of CCOD in general and of our service provider customers in particular."

About CosmoCom
CosmoCom is the leading provider of all-IP, universal access customer interaction management (CIM) platforms. CosmoCall Universe™ supports multi-channel contacts including telephone, email response, web chat, web voice, web video, web collaboration and voicemail in a high capacity, high availability, multi-tenant platform. CosmoCall Universe is a unified contact center suite that includes ACD, IVR, CTI, predictive dialing, multimedia recording and administrative tools. Network Service Providers use CosmoCall Universe to offer hosted Contact Center On-Demand™ services to their clients. Teleservices Outsourcers base their inbound/outbound operations on CosmoCom technology. CosmoCom also provides best-of-breed CIM components, including IP ACD and IP IVR for systems integrators, resellers and OEMs to build pre-integrated customer interaction and relationship management (CIRM) systems. CosmoCom’s customers include BT, Cable & Wireless, Deutsche Telekom, ePLDT, France Telecom, KT, NTT, Sakon and TeliaSonera. Headquartered in Melville, New York, CosmoCom has received more than 50 industry awards, and was recently ranked for the second year in a row by Deloitte as the region’s fastest growing technology company. For more information, please visit www.cosmocom.com.

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