Frost & Sullivan Commends Espial's Product Innovations and Market Growth in the IPTV Market

Frost & Sullivan selected Espial(R) IPTV as the recipient of the 2007 North American Frost & Sullivan Award for IPTV Entrepreneurial Company for its outstanding efforts and innovation to become a dominant participant in the IPTV market.

Espial experienced strong growth in 2006 and has now shipped over one million Evo(R) IPTV middleware subscriber licenses to service providers and partners. The Evo IPTV Service Platform includes Evo Client middleware and applications including Evo EPG, Evo VoD, Evo DVR, Evo Browser and Evo BML Browser, and the carrier-grade Evo Server. The company believes that IPTV is not just about emulating broadcast technology, but applying Internet rules to the TV viewing experience to provide a superior experience for subscribers and a service creation platform for operators.

The company allows service providers to build a strong subscriber "quality of experience" (QoE) through the use of interactive applications such as chat, games, personalized content and targeted advertising. Experiential features include fast scrolling and an intuitive program guide. Evo SkinTones(TM) UI technology enables service providers and customers to personalize the look and feel of the EPG.

"The company's data-driven architecture allows between 30,000 and 100,000 set-top boxes (STBs) to be managed per middleware application server," says Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Lynda Starr. "This translates into a much lower total cost of ownership for the operator, allowing them to save tens of millions over the course of a wide-scale IPTV deployment."

Culturally, Espial is a place where employees are encouraged to wear many hats and challenge themselves. Many team members have been with the company since the start and have careers heavily invested in the company.

"In addition to carrier-grade scalability and open APIs for service creation and IPTV ecosystem integration, one of Espial's major strengths is Evo's small software footprint, which translates into lower cost STBs and a longer post-deployment shelf-life for STBs," notes Starr. "Meanwhile, it also offers the ability to leverage the operator's investment in middleware and applications and port easily to other STBs or other PC/mobile devices."

Each year Frost & Sullivan presents this Award to the small company that has demonstrated superior entrepreneurial ability in its industry. The Award signifies the company's identification of a unique and revolutionary product solution with significant market potential. Additionally, it certifies that the company's marketing strategy is sound and poised for success. In selecting Espial as this year's award recipient, Frost & Sullivan analyzed over 30 companies competing in the IPTV market.

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.

About Espial IPTV (http://www.espial.com)

Espial provides IPTV middleware and applications that are modular, fully skinnable, turbo-fast, and truly open. Espial's Evo (R) IPTV Service Platform, which can be purchased as best-of-breed components or as part of a pre-integrated client-server solution, includes Evo(R) Client, Evo Server, Evo Future-Proof Framework(TM) (FPF), Evo SkinTones(TM) and applications such as Electronic Program Guide, Video on Demand, Content Portal, Games, Triple Play, and Evo Browser. Espial products have been integrated with or deployed by more than 100 vendors and operators including UPC Sweden/Com Hem, Avail Media, Siemens/Myrio, Dasan, Belgacom, Motorola, Amino, Philips, Tilgin, LodgeNet, On Command and S-Net Systems.

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, a global growth consulting company, has been partnering with clients to support the development of innovative strategies for more than 40 years. The company's industry expertise integrates growth consulting, growth partnership services, and corporate management training to identify and develop opportunities. Frost & Sullivan serves an extensive clientele that includes Global 1000 companies, emerging companies, and the investment community by providing comprehensive industry coverage that reflects a unique global perspective and combines ongoing analysis of markets, technologies, econometrics, and demographics. For more information, visit http://www.awards.frost.com or http://www.ict.frost.com.