Latitude Introduces MeetingPlace Directory Services; Voice and Web Conferencing System Leverages Company Directories to Streamline Administration and Boost Security

Business Wire, March 25, 2002

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 25, 2002

Latitude Communications Inc. (Nasdaq:LATD), the leading provider of secure, integrated voice and web conferencing solutions, announces MeetingPlace Directory Services. Designed to help companies enhance meeting security and efficiency, it automatically synchronizes employee profiles with a corporate directory and authenticates users through their network logins. MeetingPlace Directory Services integrates with popular directories such as Microsoft Active Directory and Netscape iPlanet Directory -- a unique web conferencing capability.

With web conferencing on the rise, companies now must rapidly deploy and control conferencing privileges to minimize the risk of former employees incurring fraudulent bills and accessing confidential meetings. MeetingPlace Directory Services prevents these problems by automatically updating directory changes to create a current list of authorized users.

"Real-time meetings bring both efficiencies and potential security challenges," said Matt Cain, vice president, Web and Collaboration Strategies for Meta Group. "To reduce administrative cycles, astute businesses will integrate conferencing solutions with standard enterprise infrastructure, such as directories. To ensure privacy, companies should engineer conferencing security from the top down and rely on user profile protection."

By using the corporate directory as the source of user profile information, MeetingPlace Directory Services simplifies profile management and guarantees an accurate record of active employees.

"MeetingPlace Directory Services has taken an administrative burden off my shoulders," said Steve Jaroslovsky, manager of telecommunications for Intuit. "Before, I manually added and deleted authorized conferencing users as they joined and left the company. Given that we have nearly 6,000 employees, this took hours of database administration each week. That's gone down to virtually zero," he said. "Directory Services is also secure. If someone leaves the company, his or her profile is automatically eliminated. New employee information is populated directly from our iPlanet directory into MeetingPlace. I am very satisfied with the product."

The solution's instant profile updates ease system use and limit help-desk calls. In addition, MeetingPlace Directory Services offers simple user access through a single login via network credentials without the need for a separate password. And through its profile sign-on, users create and store personal preferences for the experience they prefer and expect.

"Given that employees must authenticate themselves into a corporate network anyway, it's inefficient for them to go through that process a second time to attend a conference," said Emil Wang, Latitude's chief executive officer. "The whole point of conferencing technology is to enhance productivity, so by definition, it should be easy to use. MeetingPlace Directory Services provides employees with a simple login while ensuring security and personalization through existing user ID information."

About MeetingPlace

MeetingPlace, the leading integrated, secure voice and web conferencing solution, helps organizations to work better through real-time collaboration. MeetingPlace integrates with standard communications infrastructures enabling people to share and edit live documents to work together productively from any location. The result: Faster sales, reduced costs and improved communications. To simplify meeting scheduling, MeetingPlace integrates with standard groupware applications such as Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes. MeetingPlace, available as a hosted service or on-premises conferencing platform, is provided by Latitude Communications (Nasdaq:LATD). For more information, visit at www.meetingplace.net or call 800/999-7440.

About Latitude Communications

Latitude Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq:LATD) is the leader in providing secure voice and web conferencing solutions. Companies such as Aetna, Agilent, AOL/Time Warner, Charles Schwab, Cisco, Deloitte & Touche, Hewlett-Packard and Merrill Lynch are using MeetingPlace to collaborate in real-time to speed corporate decision-making. Based in Santa Clara, Calif., Latitude has direct sales and support offices or distribution partners in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia. For information, visit www.latitude.com or call 800/999-7440.

MeetingPlace is a registered trademark of Latitude Communications Inc. All other product and company names are trademarks of their respective holders.