FOSTER CITY, CA-July 30, 2001 -- Furthering its
position as the leading provider of instant messaging (IM)
applications for enterprise businesses, FaceTime Communications
today announced that it has received a fourth round of financing,
raising the amount of venture capital investment in the company to
over $40M. This round marks the second investment in FaceTime from
TH Lee. Putnam Internet Partners and Sutter Hill Ventures. The
fourth round of venture capital financing will enable FaceTime to
broaden its position as the leader in providing IM applications to
Global 2000 enterprise businesses, and move the company toward its
profitability goals. FaceTime will utilize the investment to
further the development and marketing of applications and services
designed to help enterprise businesses leverage IM for
time-sensitive communications and problem resolution. FaceTime
provides an enterprise software server, Instant Message DirectorÔ,
which manages IM communications across the rapidly growing public
IM networks such as AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo!. Instant Message
Director provides FaceTime's enterprise clients tremendous
flexibility in managing real-time IM communications both internally
and externally. The server automates finding the right knowledge
experts, routing instant messages, and queuing traffic to those
experts, similar to the way a traditional Automatic Call
Distributor manages telephone calls. In addition, the Instant
Message Director captures the knowledge shared throughout the
interactions for future use. The server also includes enterprise
level administration and management services such as auditing to a
data warehouse, session monitoring, configuration management, and
access to knowledge workers based on business rules and on-line
presence. Instant messaging networks from AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo!
have been embraced by over 100 million people around the world as a
revolutionary means of communication. With the explosive consumer
adoption of these instant messaging networks within businesses,
corporations are recognizing the need for a communications server
that will internally manage IM traffic within corporate walls for
time-sensitive communications with customers, employees, and
partners. FaceTime's products enable businesses to achieve
significant return on investment through increased first call
resolution in call centers, and lower operational costs and
increased employee productivity throughout the enterprise. In the
call center, customers have reported a 70% decrease in call
escalation using Instant Message Director for call escalation.
"FaceTime is delighted to receive strong backing from our
investors," said FaceTime CEO, Glen Vondrick. "We are in an
explosive and exciting market space with significant ongoing
revenues from Global 2000 customers such as Compaq, Dell, BankOne,
Homestore.com, and Western Union. Our unique technology
partnerships with AOL and Microsoft to utilize their instant
messaging networks, position FaceTime to be the platform that will
enable these industry giants to integrate IM within enterprise
business applications. This round of venture capital financing
demonstrates the confidence investors have in our ability to
execute upon our vision to be the premier supplier of instant
messaging for business." Instant messaging is the fastest growing
communications channel in history. According to IDC, by 2004, over
400M clients will be using instant messaging to generate 2 trillion
instant messages between consumers and businesses. Global 2000
contact center CRM budgets are predicted to be over $12 billion.
Forrester Research states that by 2002, consumers will get answers
to customer service queries by using instant messaging tools from
the likes of AOL and Microsoft to link to agents and companies'
knowledge bases. This channel will rapidly displace browser-based
customer service chat systems. In addition, Forrester estimates
that the average cost of a phone call to a contact center costs a
business approximately $33 per call, whereas an instant messaging
session costs about $7.33 per session.
About Actiance, Inc. (Formerly FaceTime Communications, Inc.)
FaceTime Communications became Actiance, Inc on January 11, 2011 following an agreement to
transfer the FaceTime trademark to Apple.
FaceTime Communications enables the safe and productive use of Unified Communications and Web 2.0,
including instant messaging, blogs and social networking. Ranked number one by IDC for five consecutive
years, FaceTime's award-winning solutions are used by more than 1,500 customers for the security,
management and compliance of real-time communications. FaceTime supports or has strategic partnerships
with all leading IM, unified communications providers and social networks including AOL, Google, Yahoo!,
Skype, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
FaceTime is headquartered in Belmont, California. For more information visit
http://www.facetime.com or call 888-349-3223.
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