Contactual OnDemand Contact Center Licensed for Vitstage™ Contact Center Platform Service

Contactual and Vitstage Work Together at Rapid Pace to Launch a Co-branded Product in Japan

SAN CARLOS, CA (July 26, 2005) – Contactual, Inc., a leading provider of on-demand contact center solutions, and Vitstage, a Japanese leader in information technology solutions for contact centers, today announced that Vitstage will be hosting, selling and managing a hosted contact center, licensed from Contactual.  The co-branded “keepa” contact center application will be connected with the Vitstage inspirX solution, already known in the Japanese marketplace. 

“We are very pleased to announce this non-exclusive relationship – Contactual’s second International licensing agreement in the first half of 2005,” said Mansour Salame, Founder and CEO, Contactual. “Vitstage is clearly an IT trend-setter in Japan.  Introducing our co-branded product into the Vitstage business product line has been remarkably smooth, and Vitstage has proven to be especially nimble and adept at learning the nuances of the hosted call center business in America.”

Today’s announcement comes as Contactual and Vitstage wrap up market-entry strategic planning and intra-company engineering development in Japan and Silicon Valley.  Both companies are optimistic about the growing worldwide demand for hosted contact centers.  Contact center industry analysts expect the worldwide market for hosted contact center services to grow to several billion dollars by 2008.  According to Vitstage, the decision to license the Contactual OnDemand Contact Center was based on the platform’s business fundamentals.  

“Contactual has built a VoIP and SIP based hosted contact center from the ground up, using industry-standard hardware, and leveraging open source technologies.  These attributes are critical from a licensing standpoint,” said Hayato Maruyama, President, Vitstage.  “After reviewing the business fundamentals at Contactual, we realized that the potential for this product is strong in Japan, and worldwide.  And, after working with Contactual on a business knowledge-share, we believe that the recent Contactual US market success could be emulated in Japan.” 

Vitstage will reveal feature and functionality details of the contact center platform service “keepa” by Contactual along with distribution and availability information in July 2005.

About the Contactual OnDemand Contact Center
Over the past five years, Contactual has developed a feature-rich on-demand contact center product that leverages state-of-the-art technologies, like VoIP and SIP.  Contactual has identified the key features that any call center needs, and delivered, without lowering our industry-leading standards for reliability, scalability and ease-of-use. Feature examples include, but are not limited to:

• Multimedia Interaction Router/ACD
• Multimedia switch
• Real-time reporting and monitoring
• Call recording and monitoring
• Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
• Computer Telephony Integration (CTI)
• Chat
• Co-browsing
• Knowledge Base
• Self Help
• Web Administration

About Contactual
Contactual was founded in 2000 as White PJ, Inc., with the goals of reducing costs and eliminating the risks companies face when deploying customer service automation solutions. The White PJ customer service automation center quickly established itself as an award-winning solution for small and medium call centers. In 2004, White PJ’s founder and CEO embarked on a successful business strategy that reinforces the company's key product advantages of scalability and reliability, targeting vertical industries that deal in mission critical data and services. With hundreds of companies using Contactual products, the company has matured and emerged as the leader in on-demand contact center products.  To match the new business strategy, a new company name (Contactual) was selected in 2004 to communicate the core value of the product. In January of 2005, NEC Business Solutions Australia was announced as Contactual’s first product licensee (Agent 99) for the Pacific Rim.  For more information, visit www.contactual.com.

*Contactual is a trademark of Contactual, Inc.  NEC and NEC Business Solutions are registered marks of NEC Corp., Agent 99 is a trademark of NEC Corp.