ZoneSpeak™ is a suite of overhead paging devices that integrate into Cistera’s RapidBroadcast™ Application Engine to enhance communications capabilities for emergency and non-emergency event alerting and notification. Ideal for indoor spaces such as classrooms, cafeterias or conference rooms, as well as outdoor environments such as common areas and recreational facilities, the ZoneSpeak goes beyond one-way broadcasting to allow individuals to respond to alerts and notifications from anywhere on the campus, both inside and out.

ZoneSpeak represents the most recent breakthrough in extending IP communications beyond phones by the company which also developed the ZoneController™, the first synchronized broadcasting solution to incorporate legacy overhead paging systems into IP solutions. The Cistera ConvergenceServer™, which is integrated with all of the company’s services, expands the reach of an IP solution to include IP and analog phones, iPhones, Android and other SMS capable phones, Land Mobile Radios, public address systems, and email systems.

With increased pressure to provide seamless communication during crisis and public safety situations whether in K12/higher education, federal, state or local government facilities, or for any organization with a public safety mandate, Cistera ZoneSpeak can be deployed to improve safety, security and visibility in times of crisis. Cistera ZoneSpeak is currently implemented in over 100 customers covering over 1,000,000 people.

“The ZoneSpeak solution can be used for situational awareness during a crisis for example.” said Greg Royal Cistera founder and CEO. “The devices can be set to monitor mode. This allows the speakers to listen (and record) live audio so that responders have increased information in a crisis. Many situations have video monitoring present but not audio. A combination such as this can dramatically improve public safety.”

Cistera ZoneSpeak and ZoneController can be ordered immediately.

Over 50% of large enterprises don’t accurately know how much they spend with respect to their telecom services according to recent reports. Overall, most organizations are overpaying 10% or more for their telephone services and more than 20% or more for wireless services.

Cistera Expense Management Solutions help clients optimize their telecom spend through third party management and audit services that recover costs and insure future savings for customers. Furthermore, Cistera can provide expertise on the correct mix of unified communications capability for your organization and how businesses can meet evolving requirements for better communications processes without necessarily spending more on their communications budgets.

“I can’t remember a better time and economy where we should all be looking at our telecommunications spend. Better yet, how we can simply get more out of communications infrastructure without necessarily spending more.” says Cistera CEO Greg Royal. “If you think that there is room for improvement in how you spend your monthly telecommunications dollars, we need to talk”.

Revenue for the first quarter of fiscal 2012 was $0.454 million, up 6% from $0.43 million in the previous quarter. Support and maintenance contracts were $0.337 million, up 16% from $0.29 million in the same quarter last year.

Net operating income for the quarter was $0.039 million, or $0.00 per share, compared with net operating income of $0.016 million or $0.00 per share, a 240% improvement, over same quarter last year. Earnings before Interest, Depreciation and Amortization, and Taxes (EBITDA) were positive $0.064 million or 14.2% of revenue.

“Our efforts to control costs while growing our pipeline have been successful. Our pipeline is now bigger than it has been in the last two and a half years,” says Cistera CEO Greg Royal. “We continue to grow our partnerships and deliver new capability to our customers. We have expanded our development capability through near-sourcing and released a number of highly successful features for global security and healthcare.

“New license revenue, however, has been difficult to achieve because of the weakness in the United States economy and a slowdown in federal government spending,” says Royal. “However the highlight is the strong growth in Support and Maintenance business, up over 16% year on year. However the company is in the best position it has been in since this recession started. Once business spending recovers we should see a dramatic improvement in profitability,” he added.

Highlights this quarter include the delivery of MedQMS Healthcare Quality Management System, the successful installation of Redline system for a major global securities group and the formation of a partnership with New World Communications for the delivery of telecommunications expense management solutions.

As mobile app and platform leadership continues to coalesce around Apple and Google, both players are leveraging their strengths into the cloud in different, but compelling new ways that are likely to generate long-term value and competitive differentiation for each of their respective ecosystems. Topline findings from this quarter’s report focus on how developers eye new opportunities for applications to become more social and more connected

Read the full report here.

Cistera Networks®, a leading provider of enterprise application platforms and engines for unified communications, announces the delivery of a comprehensive unified communications disaster recovery and business continuity solution for a global financial services group, provided in conjunction with UC security solutions vendor Sipera Systems.

With call center agents and traders distributed throughout North and South America, the financial services group identified a critical business need around operational continuity and disaster recovery. The unified communications solution needed to be fully recoverable in the event of a disaster such as adverse weather conditions. While the customer had a backup data center connected using metropolitan fiber to duplicate computer capacity in the event of an emergency, the solution also required that agents be able to work from various locations including from home when circumstances require.  Furthermore, the customer needed to ensure that all of the unified communications traffic could be monitored for quality, recorded as needed, and properly encrypted as required for compliance with privacy laws and retention rules.

Cistera delivered two CCS 2540 high availability servers running the latest version of Cistera Quality Assurance and Management software, one at each data center. The CCS integrated with the award-winning Sipera UC-Sec security appliances to provide secure access from any location through secure connections, and to send communications traffic to CCS for quality assurance and compliance purposes. Each agent is able to access all unified communications functions regardless of location and services required.  The combined solution ensures that these communications are monitored and archived to meet quality targets and compliance rules, while at the same time being encrypted and fully private to traverse external networks to reach agents.

“Cistera and Sipera are among the few vendors capable of delivering secure and highly available unified communications regardless of distance and security requirements” says Cistera CEO Greg Royal. “Previously, capability was lost when a disaster plan was implemented. Today with Cistera and Sipera that is no longer the case. Call Centers can be back up and running without loss of customer service and capability.”

“Communications continuity is an essential part of maintaining smooth operations when the unexpected hits,” said John Lochow, CEO of Sipera Systems. “With Sipera and Cistera, an enterprise can maintain mission-critical communications while also ensuring these communications meet all quality, privacy and retention requirements.”

With Sipera’s solutions, firms are adopting enterprise-wide encrypted UC, safe SIP trunks, teleworker programs, IM archiving and monitoring, secure remote offices, and compliant UC. Sipera’s groundbreaking “Borderless UC” architecture enables all communications to be encrypted and compliant on any device in any location inside or outside the enterprise, vital for delivering a truly comprehensive business continuity solution.

The award-wining Cistera ConvergenceServer is the industry’s most comprehensive delivery platform for a robust and scalable solution that adds features and functionality to a communications environment. Each Cistera ConvergenceServer comes equipped with the full range of Cistera application engines, making installation and expansion a simple, straightforward process. The platform’s broad portfolio of virtualized application services enables users to improve satisfaction, increase productivity and collaboration as well as provide a safer environment. Based on open standards and a proven server technology foundation, the Cistera ConvergenceServer’s single unified administration lowers the total cost of ownership of a full-featured communications solution.

With the importance of messaging and notification in today’s busy healthcare environments, it has become necessary for a new level of categorization for information beyond straightforward SMS-type text notification. Customers have made significant investments in their current messaging systems, including wireless devices with color-enhanced displays, and want to get full value from those investments.

With a messaging and notification solution that provides color-coded visual cues, their staff can more quickly respond appropriately based upon the flags they receive. Notifications can then be prioritized accordingly and delivered to the right people at the right time. This improves response times by reducing message clutter and noise inside the communications channel.

Cistera has already rolled out this capability to several healthcare customers.

“Time is critical in an emergency situation, and finding ways to improve on the efficacy and capability of messaging and notification is one way that we help our customers meet their business needs,” said Cistera Networks CEO Greg Royal. “Our systems are used on a 24/7 basis in healthcare organizations across the country and often are used in critical situations. This capability improves recognition particularly when faced with clinician fatigue and other distractions so that caregivers can respond appropriately.”

The Cistera Enhanced Color Classification Module is available in the latest version of Cistera Convergence Server.

The award-wining Cistera ConvergenceServer is the industry’s most comprehensive delivery platform for a robust and scalable solution that adds features and functionality to a communications environment. Each Cistera ConvergenceServer comes equipped with the full range of Cistera application engines, making installation and expansion a simple, straightforward process. The platform’s broad portfolio of virtualized application services enables users to improve satisfaction, increase productivity and collaboration as well as provide a safer environment. Based on open standards and a proven server technology foundation, the Cistera ConvergenceServer’s single unified administration lowers the total cost of ownership of a full-featured communications solution.

Cistera Networks has expanded its Research and Development team to enhance the capability to deliver next-generation cloud based services, expand support for Avaya platforms and increase its ability to partner in healthcare, federal and public safety markets.

“We have a large agenda of Research and Development projects on the roadmap in the next three years, particularly in the Federal Government, Healthcare and Public Safety markets, as well as development for the Avaya platforms.” Says Cistera CEO Greg Royal. “We were looking for a way to expand our capability based on particular skills we required, skills that were not necessarily available in house. With this in mind, we have expanded our capability with virtual teams in the USA that can bring experience to bear on with a particular project. This allows us to scale up quickly for a particular short and long term need and more cost-effectively than traditional approaches.”

“Cistera has always been known for the quality of our technology. We have more large-scale implementations, including the US Department of Defense, than any other provider in our field.” says Cistera CEO Greg Royal. “The expansion of our capability to deliver advanced capabilities such as Red-line and products as MedQMS for the Healthcare industry, show that not only is innovation top of mind at Cistera, we deliver it on a daily basis”.

Cistera Networks® (OTC:CNWT), a leading provider of enterprise application platforms and engines for unified communications comments on CompTIA report, Unified Communications and Collaboration Market Trends, and concludes that hard ROI projects and cost recovery are the key to UC implementations.

Deployment of unified communications solutions is poised for growth as organizations build on a foundation of voice and data applications to include more collaboration and social communications tools, according to new research from CompTIA, the non-profit association for the information technology (IT) industry. Nearly half (49 percent) of the organizations said their expenditures on unified communications technology will grow relatively faster than their overall IT budget over the next 12 months. Large firms (500 or more employees) are significantly more likely to increase their unified communications investment relative to the overall IT budget than the smallest of firms (1-49 employees), 64 percent vs. 35 percent.

“This year Cistera has a seen this year to a much higher degree, targeted Unified Communications implementations, that is UC deployed for a particular business process” says Cistera CEO Greg Royal. “Although this behavior is normally associated with larger customers such as the recent implementation for a global security group, we are seeing a growing instance of smaller businesses (sub 500 employees) deploying UC for particular tasks.”

The study also cites that several customer challenges that remain. The largest being price sensitivity (39 percent of channel respondents); reliability concerns (36 percent); security concerns (34 percent); quantifying return on investment (33 percent); and a general lack of understanding of unified communications products and services (32 percent).

“Cistera’s response has been to focus more directly with particular verticals, such as the new Healthcare solution MedQMS, with a specific return on investment metrics.” responds Royal. “Turnaround time for hospital beds is a specific and measure-able metric for healthcare organizations. Response time for first-responders is a specific and measure-able metric. We work hard with our customers to directly tie the investment they make in Cistera software to the business requirement in question. What we are seeing is that if customers focus on specific goals for their UC implementation over and above broad productivity solutions, such as web conferencing, not only is there a much clearer ROI case, that ROI can be achieved much faster than one would normally see.”

“I think Cistera is uniquely capable in that we focus on specific business processes and enable those. A good example is our new relationship with New World Communications. Telecom Management is no only an art, but also a discipline. Couple that with a Unified Communications strategy and it is easy to see the payback” says Royal. “There is a huge market for both the rationalization of the telecom budget which not only includes cost recovery, but turning that budget towards hard ROI projects.”

[image: CC Some rights reserved by HEFU]

The Health Care industry of the 21st Century is continually evaluating and embracing new information technology solutions that enable better, faster communications while meeting mandated compliance standards. Communications plays a vital role in the successful delivery of actionable healthcare information and helps organizations in two critical areas; improved speed and accuracy of the decision-making process and the delivery of successful patient outcomes. Today’s unified communication solutions allow Healthcare professionals the ability to utilize new and improved workflow systems, asset tracking solutions, scheduling systems and disaster recovery solutions in a comprehensive and integrated fashion.

Cistera’s new Quality Management System (MedQMS) provides the link for these systems to work together to increase communication capabilities and decrease costs associated with manual intervention. Some of the Key Benefits and IP Communication Solutions provided through Cistera Networks MedQMS are:

• Easy, customized integration with third-party workflow and asset utilization systems (eg: bed tracking systems) to push notifications from that system to multiple device types.
• Ability to broadcast notifications simultaneously to multiple recipients such as IP Phones, Mobile Phones, PC desktops, 2-way Radios,Overhead Speakers, email, SMS and social networking sites.
• Custom integration with wireless IP Phones and hand-held radios to allow paging capabilities that are easily accessed.
• Ad-hoc and full time recording capabilities to record, archive and retrieve critical internal and external communications.
• • Provide emergency alerting via “1 button push” that broadcasts customized alerts and code messages to multiple devices and systems.

“Cistera has been known for comprehensive communications architecture and with the introduction of MedQMS, now healthcare organizations can benefit from this large-scale secure and reliable infrastructure.” says Cistera CEO Greg Royal. “We have now delivered MedQMS to over a dozen large healthcare systems. All have seen dramatic improvements in processes throughout their infrastructure. The key is improving real-time inter-personnel communications and Cistera delivers.”

Enterprise customers are analyzing their communications spend far more closely but are frustrated with the level of transparency in their telecommunications billings. For example:

• Over 50% of large enterprises don’t accurately know how much they spend with respect to their telecom services.
• Most organizations are overpaying 10% or more for their telephone services; 20% or more for wireless services.
• On average, more than 7% of telecom service expenses are in error.
• Wireless Cell phone providers will not help you optimize your spend to your best benefit. You can negotiate the best carrier discounts, but knowing how to optimize within a carrier is not in their best interests.

Cistera has teamed with NWC to jointly market and deliver products and services that maximize the investments that enterprises make each month in their communications infrastructure.

“We are excited to be partnering with Cistera Networks, a company that shares our vision for client-first.” Says Sam Cuccia, CEO/President of New World Communications. “We believe the combined resources of New World and Cistera will be an extremely valuable asset to clients looking to take advantage of the advancements in technology, while attempting to keep costs down.”

“There are incredible synergies between Cistera and NWC to not only deliver enhanced capabilities with their communications infrastructure, but manage their ongoing telecom spend as well.” says Cistera CEO Greg Royal. “It is important that our customers spend wisely both on capital infrastructure and ongoing costs. This is the only way to deliver superior total-cost-of-ownership and manage the telecom lifecycle”.