Sonic Foundry Positioned as a Market Leader in Wainhouse Research Study on the Distance Education and e-Learning Landscape

Sonic Foundry’s Mediasite ranks highest in depth of product offerings

MADISON, Wis. - Sonic Foundry, Inc. (NASDAQ: SOFO), the recognized market leader for rich media webcasting and knowledge management, today announced the company and its product, Mediasite, have been recognized by Wainhouse Research as a market leader in streaming and lecture capture solutions for distance education and eLearning markets.

The WR study series, The Distance Education and e-Learning Landscape, provides a broad overview of today’s state of the distance education and e-Learning markets. It focuses on those companies that offer some type of strategic differentiation or go-to-market messaging unique to one of three major markets: corporate training, higher education or K-12. Volume 2 of the study assesses videoconferencing, streaming, and lecture capture solutions in educational and training environments, describing capabilities, applications, benefits, market size, and major players. Among the criteria used for evaluation are innovation, market understanding, overall viability, product strategy, and customer experience.

According to the report, Sonic Foundry ranks highest from the perspective of depth of overall blend of products and among the leaders in ability to execute. The report goes on to list distinct reasons for Sonic Foundry’s strength in education, including:
• It has a mature product that "benefits from lengthy development time and multiple enhancements.
• Mediasite is focused on on-demand access, which supports any combination of blended learning, e-Learning, or distance learning, while balancing the needs of in-room or local students. The value of that balance cannot be overstated, as it makes it versatile for both distance learning as well as everyday, local campus use"
• The company has been “savvy in product design and direction.”

“Sonic Foundry has secured its position as a market leader with Mediasite, a strong and mature product that puts content at the instructor’s and learner’s fingertips. With the release of Mediasite 5.0, the company delivered new features desired by the market at the right point in time to encourage adoption,” said report author Alan Greenberg, Senior Analyst & Partner at Wainhouse Research. “Learners now have the flexibility to control when, where, and how they access training and course material. These tools are receiving overwhelmingly high marks for their effectiveness and their ability to enable interactions between educators and learners in new ways. Mediasite should be on anyone’s short list of a full-featured, rich media platform.”

“We appreciate being recognized as a market leader in this Wainhouse report. Over the years we’ve worked hard to deliver the webcasting solutions that help our customers bridge time and distance,” said Rimas Buinevicius, chairman and CEO of Sonic Foundry. “To be represented in this influential industry report is validation of Sonic Foundry’s strengths in the emerging eLearning market. We look forward to continuing to enhance Mediasite in ways that enable enterprise-wide adoption as well as allow entry-level users to experience the benefits of real-time web collaboration.”