Nortel Selects Witness Systems For Enhanced Contact Center Capabilities; Solution Provides Recording, Monitoring Capabilities to Improve Customer Loyalty

Business Wire, Sept 20, 2005

TORONTO -- Nortel (NYSE:NT)(TSX:NT) has teamed with Witness Systems (Nasdaq:WITS) to deliver improved capabilities to Nortel's award-winning Contact Center solution. The new suite of services is designed to drive competitive advantage by providing faster, more efficient responses to customer needs.

"The strategic OEM relationship between Nortel and Witness Systems blends leading contact center communications technologies with advanced contact recording and quality monitoring products to create an integrated solution delivering world-class performance optimization capabilities," said Blair Pleasant, president and principal analyst, COMMfusion, a market research firm.

"The ability to infuse contact centers with a new depth of customer knowledge that makes each interaction as meaningful and productive as possible is a powerful tool for driving competitive advantage," said Malcolm Collins, president, Enterprise Networks, Nortel. "The Nortel and Witness Systems relationship delivers greater choice for our customers, allowing them to deploy multimedia, SIP-based contact center capabilities regardless of whether they have deployed an IP, traditional telephony or hybrid infrastructure."

The new Nortel Contact Recording and Nortel Quality Monitoring suite jointly developed with Witness Systems allows more information to be captured for each customer. The new suite can be deployed independently or with the Nortel Contact Center solution (http://products.nortel.com/go/product_content.jsp?parId=0&segId=0&cat Id=-9190&prod_id=9381&locale=en-US), (Due to its length, this URL may need to be copied/pasted into your Internet browser's address field. Remove the extra space if one exists.) and provides recording and archiving of all calls to help customers with regulatory compliance. This is particularly important in the financial sector, for example, to quickly confirm that trades and transactions were executed properly. Further, monitoring the interactions of all agents helps identify areas for improvement that can be highlighted in employee training.

The new suite is designed to reduce costs and drive differentiation by using customer interactions to maximize revenue, increase customer loyalty, and obtain valuable intelligence and competitive insight. The relationship is also expected to allow Nortel to leverage Witness Systems' experience and proven quality monitoring and IP recording technologies.

"We're very pleased to be working closely with Nortel," said Dave Gould, chief executive officer, Witness Systems. "Their confidence in selecting us for this strategic relationship is strong validation of our technology and market leadership in the exciting world of VoIP."

"Our jointly developed, software-only solution with Nortel provides forward-thinking companies a powerful combination to improve the performance of their customer service," Gould said. "The offering is more efficient, less expensive to maintain, and offers a single point of administration - all of which lead to a lower total cost of ownership. It allows for a phased evolution from traditional telephony to advanced IP capabilities that protect a company's investment."

About Witness Systems

Witness Systems (Nasdaq:WITS) is a leading global provider of workforce optimization software and services. The company's solutions - which play a strategic role in the customer interaction centers of Global 2000 and small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) worldwide - also are deployed in IP Telephony and back office environments, and throughout the extended enterprise, including branch offices. Witness Systems' software is comprised of quality monitoring, compliance, high-volume and IP Telephony recording solutions, as well as workforce management, actionable learning and performance management applications. The company's solutions enable organizations to optimize their people, processes and technology throughout the enterprise. Witness Systems' customers benefit from an integrated business consulting, implementation and training methodology that supports a rapid deployment, enabling them to drive revenue, reduce operational costs, and achieve greater customer retention and loyalty. For additional information about Witness Systems, visit www.witness.com.

About Nortel

Nortel is a recognized leader in delivering communications capabilities that enhance the human experience, ignite and power global commerce, and secure and protect the world's most critical information. Serving both service provider and enterprise customers, Nortel delivers innovative technology solutions encompassing end-to-end broadband, Voice over IP, multimedia services and applications, and wireless broadband designed to help people solve the world's greatest challenges. Nortel does business in more than 150 countries. For more information, visit Nortel on the Web at www.nortel.com. For the latest Nortel news, visit www.nortel.com/news.> Certain information included in this press release is forward-looking and is subject to important risks and uncertainties. The results or events predicted in these statements may differ materially from actual results or events.