Santa Clara, California, April 17 /PRNewswire/ -- Latitude Communications (Nasdaq: LATD), a leading provider of secure, integrated rich-media conferencing solutions, today announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire the assets of Wanadu, Inc., a privately held, Los Altos, California based developer of Flash-based content creation, management and delivery products. The acquisition is a key step in Latitude's strategy to build and offer rich-media conferencing solutions that integrate voice, Web, video and instant messaging technologies.

Latitude will acquire Wanadu's assets in exchange for cash and a percentage of future revenue from sales of Wanadu products in 2003. Latitude expects to gain seven individuals in marketing, sales and development based in California and a team of 15 seasoned Web development engineers outside the United States. The transaction is expected to close by early May 2003, subject to satisfaction of certain conditions.

In a separate press release issued today, Latitude announced the availability of MeetingPlace Web 4.0, a fourth generation web conferencing solution that significantly extends the interactive application sharing capabilities and meeting controls of earlier versions. Wanadu's products strongly complement MeetingPlace Web 4.0. Users can create rich-media presentations in PowerPoint that incorporate voice, video and interactive objects, and then deliver them live or on-demand over the Web via Flash.

Flash, developed by Macromedia, has become a de-facto desktop standard, available on over 520 million desktops worldwide in most operating environments. By leveraging Flash, Wanadu's technology extends Latitude's reach into a much broader array of enterprises and applications.

"Our vision is to provide businesses with rich-media conferencing solutions that are deployed as standard applications on their own networks," said Rick McConnell, chief executive officer of Latitude Communications. "We expect this acquisition to dramatically strengthen our Web collaboration offering and to be ideal for sales, marketing and training applications. Additionally, Wanadu's overseas engineering team will substantially increase our ability to deliver leading web conferencing solutions without a commensurate increase in our development costs."

"Using Wanadu's enterprise PowerPoint-to-Flash products, our customers have seen a dramatic reduction in the time and money needed to produce and deliver rich-media content for the Web. It is exciting to have Latitude's expertise, talent and resources to make our solutions immediately available to a much larger market," said George Bolanos, chief executive officer of Wanadu. "Joining forces with Latitude, we look forward to fulfilling our shared vision of developing high-performance, secure and cost effective rich-media conferencing solutions."

About Wanadu, Inc.

Founded in early 2000 and based in Los Altos, California, Wanadu's goal is to make business communication solutions that are easy, fast and affordable for professionals in training, elearning, sales, and marketing. Wanadu's suite of solutions includes enterprise solutions for conferencing, PowerPoint conversion to Flash, PowerPoint document management and legacy application integration.

About Latitude Communications

Latitude Communications provides MeetingPlace, a leading rich-media conferencing solution. Companies such as Agilent, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young and Lockheed Martin use the solution to work better and speed decisions through real-time collaboration. Available as an outsourced service or on-premises platform, MeetingPlace integrates with traditional and IP communications infrastructures enabling people to share and edit live documents from any location. The technology integrates with standard groupware such as Outlook to simplify scheduling and Active Directory for enhanced security and administrative control. Based in Santa Clara, California, Latitude has offices and distribution partners worldwide. Visit www.meetingplace.net or call +1 (408) 988-7200 (+1 800-999-7440 in the U.S.).

Cautionary Language

This press release contains forward-looking statements regarding Latitude's future operating results and business strategies that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such statements. All forward-looking statements in this release are based upon information available to Latitude as of the date hereof, and Latitude assumes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. Potential risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, Latitude's limited operating history, economic uncertainty and resulting weakness in capital expenditures, the Company's shift toward a more services-oriented business, the Company's dependence upon major customers, potential fluctuations in operating results, intense competition, including price competition, from substantially larger, more recognized companies, the early stage of development of the market for integrated voice and web conferencing systems, the Company's reliance on the performance of its development and distribution partners, uncertain market acceptance for Latitude's products and services and rapid technological change. Risk factors are described in detail in the Company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2002 and in its other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

MeetingPlace is a registered trademark of Latitude Communications Inc. Microsoft PowerPoint and Macromedia Flash are trademarks of Microsoft and Macromedia respectively.

SOURCE Latitude Communications