Value of a hosted delivery model for unified communications to be discussed by
Frank Grillo at financial technology seminar at Warwick New York Hotel

Frank Grillo, Cypress Communications’ executive vice president of marketing, will present an educational session entitled, “Why Go Hosted? Implementing Unified Communications” for the Wall Street Technology Association (WSTA). The seminar will be held Wednesday, 21 May 2008 at the Warwick New York Hotel in New York City, NY USA.

Mr. Grillo will discuss the options available to financial services firms for implementing unified communications—namely, a do-it-yourself approach vs. a hosted delivery model. He will also provide insight into how CIOs of financial services organizations can use unified communications to increase productivity and fulfill strategic initiatives.

“It is an honor to be selected by the Wall Street Technology Association to speak about unified communications,” said Frank Grillo. “Financial firms have a lot to gain from unified communications, but implementing a solution often requires integrating numerous technologies from multiple vendors, which can be an insurmountable task for the typical financial services firm. By choosing a hosted delivery model, however, financial firms can benefit from the productivity-enhancing features of unified communications with no capital investment in hardware; no need to hire, train, and sustain dedicated IT staff to manage the infrastructure; and no worries of technological obsolescence.”

Hosted solutions—or those that require no capital purchase of communications equipment, are physically housed at a location separate from the enterprise and managed by a third-party—are increasingly being implemented by small and mid-sized enterprises that want to leverage the collaborative benefits of unified communications, but don’t want to invest in, build, and manage a complex VoIP environment.

The WSTA Unified Communications Seminar is open to the public. Attendees can register until 2:00 PM ET on Tuesday, May 20, 2008 by visiting their website: http://www.wsta.org/events/unified_communications.

About Wall Street Technology Association

The Wall Street Technology Association, founded in 1967, is a not-for-profit educational organization that focuses on technologies, operational approaches, and business issues for the global financial community. The WSTA offers seminars, roundtables, panel discussions, leading-edge showcases, social events, networking opportunities, and its bi-monthly educational Ticker Magazine. Its website is a dynamic resource for industry information and WSTA news. The Vendor Affiliate Program offers organized opportunities for vendors to keep financial industry professionals aware of current and emerging technologies.

For more information, please visit their website: http://www.wsta.org

About Cypress Communications

Boasting a 20-year legacy and more than 6,500 customers coast-to-coast, Cypress provides Communications as a Service (CaaS) to small- and mid-sized enterprises. CaaS goes beyond traditional hosted VoIP offerings by delivering a fully managed unified communications solution. Comprehensive and flexible, the CaaS solution from Cypress includes integrated voice and data access, desktop phones, soft phones, local and long-distance voice services, voicemail, advanced collaboration tools, and remote office functionality. From their computers, users can take advantage of productivity-enhancing applications such as real-time presence, desktop video, unified messaging, chat, file sharing, and Outlook integration. As a Deloitte Fast 50 and Fast 500 award recipient, Cypress Communications is also recognized as one of the fastest growing telecommunication companies in North America. Cypress is headquartered in Atlanta.

For more information, please visit their website: http://www.cypresscom.net

About Frank Grillo

Frank Grillo is a widely respected speaker on the technology and telecom circuits, educating thousands of professionals from coast to coast. As a visionary communications executive, Mr. Grillo joined Cypress Communications in August of 2005. He is known for his ability to identify growth opportunities and to produce extraordinary results that make a real contribution to the bottom line of an organization. Previously, Mr. Grillo worked as senior vice president of business services for Z-Tel and as senior vice president of global business markets for MCI WorldCom, where he managed over 1,000 marketing professionals and was responsible for global business marketing strategy, including product management, pricing, marketing communications, advertising, sales training, sales support, sales engineering, and online and alternate channel distribution. From 1995 to 2000, he was vice-president of marketing for LDDS.