Interactive Intelligence Wins Frost & Sullivan Innovation Award

Company receives award for new “communications-based process automation” solution

INDIANAPOLIS, Sept. 2, 2009 -- Global research and consulting firm, Frost & Sullivan, has honored Interactive Intelligence (Nasdaq: ININ) with its 2009 North American Product Differentiation Innovation Award for the vendor’s new “communications-based process automation” solution.

The new solution, Interaction Process Automation™ (IPA), uses the Interactive Intelligence unified IP business communications platform to capture, prioritize, route, escalate, and track each step of work throughout a business process. Primary functions include end-to-end process modeling, routing and queuing of process steps, real-time presence, reporting, multichannel recording and monitoring.

"Because Interactive Intelligence comes from a communications and contact center background, it can leverage all it has learned about designing the flow of efficient processes," said Frost analyst, Keith Dawson. "By building IPA on top of its existing IP business communications platform, Interactive Intelligence has also made process engineering something reasonable and attainable for organizations of all types and sizes."

The Frost & Sullivan Award for Product Differentiation Innovation is presented each year to the company that has best demonstrated the ability to develop and/or advance products with more innovative capabilities than competing vendors and products. The Award recognizes a company’s successful adoption of new or existing technology that has become a part of its well-designed product family. Such innovation is expected to significantly contribute to the industry in terms of product performance and degree/rate of technical change.

Interactive Intelligence developed IPA as a first-of-its-kind alternative to traditionally complex and costly process management systems, and "tool-kits" that simply embed communications into applications, thus limiting return on investment.

"IPA is a completely new approach to process automation," said Interactive Intelligence founder and CEO, Dr. Donald E. Brown. "We’ve taken mature communications technology and applied it to the broader area of business process automation. IPA helps organizations increase efficiencies and cut costs by decreasing the amount of time it takes to complete a given business process. It further delivers a quantifiable return on investment by eliminating process latency, minimizing human error, and providing standardized methods for handling business processes."

With IPA, Interactive Intelligence has clearly demonstrated innovation, according to Dawson.

"Interactive Intelligence has taken a fairly simple proposition -- that communications can automate processes -- and used it to cut the Gordian knot tangling unified communications, agent management, and business process optimization," Dawson said. "And the company has accomplished this without having to invent a new technology, or re-architect its product or market strategy. That is truly the definition of 'product differentiation innovation.'"

To download the Frost 2009 North American Product Differentiation Innovation Award report about Interactive Intelligence, visit www.inin.com/FrostSullivanAward/.

For more information about IPA, visit www.inin.com/ipa.

Frost research methodology for its Product Differentiation Innovation Award includes in-depth tracking of competing market participants' product differentiation strategies. This consists of market participant interviews, end-user surveys, and extensive secondary research. Participants are then ranked with respect to measurement criteria.

In addition to ranking based on the firm’s methodology, Frost evaluates participants in the following areas:

• Degree of differentiation innovation compared to other market participants


• Positive impact on sales directly related to product differentiation


• Time-to-market improvement based on product differentiation strategy


• Benefit to end-users due to product differentiation


• Effect of product differentiation on ease-of-adaptability for new end-user applications


• Effect of product differentiation on market maturation

For more information about the Frost & Sullivan awards, visit www.awards.frost.com.

About Frost & Sullivan
Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, enables clients to accelerate growth and achieve best in class positions in growth, innovation and leadership. The company's Growth Partnership Service provides the CEO and the CEO's Growth Team with disciplined research and best practice models to drive the generation, evaluation, and implementation of powerful growth strategies. Frost & Sullivan leverages over 45 years of experience in partnering with Global 1000 companies, emerging businesses and the investment community from more than 35 offices on six continents. To join our Growth Partnership, please visit www.frost.com.

About Interactive Intelligence
Interactive Intelligence Inc. (Nasdaq: ININ) is a global provider of unified business communications solutions for contact center automation, enterprise IP telephony, and enterprise messaging. The company was founded in 1994 and has more than 3,000 customers worldwide. Interactive Intelligence is among Software Magazine's top 500 global software and services suppliers, is ranked among Network World's top 200 North American networking vendors, is a BusinessWeek "hot growth 50" company, and is among FORTUNE Small Business magazine's top 100 fastest growing companies. The company is also positioned in the leaders' quadrant of the Gartner 2008 Contact Center Infrastructure, Worldwide Magic Quadrant report. Interactive Intelligence employs approximately 600 people and is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. It has six global corporate offices with additional sales offices throughout North America, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific. Interactive Intelligence can be reached at +1 317.872.3000 or info@inin.com; on the Net: http://www.inin.com.

About Amtel Communications Since 1989 and with more than 700 customer organizations, Amtel Communications has delivered value and innovative communications solutions to government and enterprise of New Zealand. Being the New Zealand distributor for Interactive Intelligence we have offered the same value and innovation to the contact centre and enterprise IP PBX market with Interactive Intelligence all-in-one platform of award winning application suites. Amtel are committed to a mission of being New Zealand’s leading provider of solutions that empower businesses to communicate in the most convenient and effective way and today have an outstanding reputation as a distributor of converged VoIP & computer telephony software, voice messaging and true unified communications solutions. In New Zealand we currently have agreements to resell our IP-PBX, IP Contact Centre, Business Information Delivery and messaging solutions through many of New Zealand’s leading Microsoft VARs and Telecommunications service providers. With our partners we currently support sites ranging from simple voice mail to sophisticated Contact Centre and IP-PBX deployments.

This release may contain certain forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially are described in the company's SEC filings.

Interactive Intelligence Inc. is the owner of the marks INTERACTIVE INTELLIGENCE, its associated LOGO and numerous other marks. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.

Contacts:
Christine Holley
Director of Market Communications
Interactive Intelligence Inc.
+1 317.715.8220
christine.holley@inin.com

Rachael Woodhead
Sales & Marketing
Amtel Communications Ltd
+64 9 486 9000 opt 4
rwoodhead@amtel.co.nz