Florham Park, NJ -- August 10, 2004 -- Florham Park, NJ - Global Crossing (NASDAQ: GLBCE) today announced the expansion of its alliance with Microsoft, integrating Microsoft® Office Live Meeting into Global Crossing's collaboration services portfolio. Live Meeting is a Web conferencing service that enables conference participants to broadcast visuals, applications, Web pages, files, or software in real-time.
"Together, Global Crossing and Microsoft are bringing Live Meeting to the desktops of Global Crossing's multi-national customers, helping support project collaboration and e-business initiatives," said Anthony Christie, Global Crossing's chief marketing officer. "With collaboration services such as Global Crossing's Ready-Access audio conferencing service and Live Meeting, we're making it simple for organizations to communicate on-demand and make the best use of their talent pool to drive teamwork and productivity."
Global Crossing customers have already begun to trial the service, which is optimized by the global connectivity and reliability of Global Crossing's end-to-end network architecture. Through 2010, the Web conferencing market is projected to experience a compound annual growth rate of more than 30 percent, according to consulting research firm Frost & Sullivan.
Microsoft's Live Meeting complements Global Crossing's extensive set of collaboration tools, which includes audio, video and Web conferencing solutions. Global Crossing has supported conferencing customers for the past 25 years, helping global enterprises facilitate group communication and enabling them to get the most productivity out of their meetings, while developing a stellar reputation for service delivery. According to Frost & Sullivan, in 1994, Frontier ConferTech -- which Global Crossing acquired in 1999 -- became the first service provider to offer a T.120 compliant document conferencing service (the first evolution of Web conferencing). Today, Global Crossing offers integrated audio and Web conferencing services such as Ready-Access® Web Meeting and e-Meeting, operator-run Event Call audio conferencing, IP videoconferencing and Global Crossing's award-winning iVideoconferencing* service for ISDN connections.
These global organizations rely on Microsoft application software to help run their businesses and require the latest productivity tools to optimize their time. Global Crossing recently became the first carrier to fully integrate the scheduling capabilities of Microsoft Outlook® directly with Global Crossing's Ready-Access Web Meeting - an integrated audio and Web conferencing service. The feature, called Ready-Access Scheduler, makes it simple to launch Web meetings. Plans are also underway for integrating Global Crossing's Ready-Access audio conferencing service with Microsoft Office Live Meeting, enabling users to access Ready-Access audio commands and functionality that will allow them to control and manage their meeting within Live Meeting. In addition, Global Crossing has migrated uCommand®, a customer management Web portal that supports e-business tools such as Global Crossing's IP VPN Service™, VoIP Service™ and Managed Services onto the Microsoft platform.
"Customers require our collaboration solutions to be intuitive and easy to use," said Dustin Grosse, Microsoft's general manager for Real Time Collaboration. Delivering integrated audio and visuals with partners helps us achieve this goal. Global organizations and their business groups use Live Meeting to collaborate with co-workers, customers, suppliers and partners around the world in real-time. This speeds the communication, sharing of knowledge and information with dramatic cost savings by eliminating the need for business travel."
For more than three years, Global Crossing has been a key network provider of global telecom services to Microsoft, including serving as the primary backbone in Europe over Global Crossing's high-speed, fiber-optic network.
Global Crossing is a pioneer in the conferencing services business, with more than 25 years experience. The company's fiber-optic network enables it to deliver integrated, customized, and managed collaboration services -- audio, video and Web-based solutions -- that address customers' network and real-time collaboration needs. Global Crossing's solutions are distinguished by their ease-of-use, transmission quality, reliability and cost-effectiveness.
*Frost & Sullivan named Global Crossing's iVideoconferencing offer, the 'Best Videoconferencing Service of 2004'.
About Global Crossing
Global Crossing (NASDAQ: GLBCE) provides telecommunications solutions over the world's first integrated global IP-based network. Its core network connects more than 300 cities and 30 countries worldwide, and delivers services to more than 500 major cities, 50 countries and 6 continents around the globe. The company's global sales and support model matches the network footprint and, like the network, delivers a consistent customer experience worldwide.
Global Crossing IP services are global in scale, linking the world's enterprises, governments and carriers with customers, employees and partners worldwide in a secure environment that is ideally suited for IP-based business applications, allowing e-commerce to thrive. The company offers a full range of managed data and voice products including Global Crossing IP VPN Service, Global Crossing Managed Services and Global Crossing VoIP services, to more than 40 percent of the Fortune 500, as well as 700 carriers, mobile operators and ISPs.
Please visit www.globalcrossing.com for more information about Global Crossing.
