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Letter To Shareholders (continued) Most important —and what I personally find most gratifying —is the way in which the Natural MicroSystems team worked together, and overcame some very difficult challenges by remaining focused on the essential business of building great products and taking care of our customers. I’m convinced these experiences have improved us and made Natural MicroSystems a more formidable competitor. So, what lies ahead? We have a unique opportunity in sight. Our industry is at the very early stage of a tremendous amount of global investment in communications infrastructure and solutions. This investment is being driven by relentless competition among service providers, rapidly changing technologies, the huge opportunities arising from the convergence of voice and data infrastructures, and the seemingly insatiable global demand for new communications services and capabilities from consumers as well as enterprises. Our customers, the equipment and solution providers scrambling to meet these requirements, are increasingly recognizing the need to leverage their capabilities and resources by collaborating with a few key suppliers who can provide essential enabling technologies and services. In the past year, we have won business with virtually every one of these large, global telecom equipment vendors — Siemens, Lucent, Ericsson, Nokia, Nortel, Motorola, NEC, and Alcatel. They have made clear to us their requirements for quality, leading-edge technologies coupled with complementary services and tight strategic relationships —and we are delivering. We aim to be the dominant provider of carrier-grade enabling technologies to the world’s leading suppliers of communications solutions for the New Network. This is the vision we’ve been pursuing, with added emphasis on converged communications technologies and a go-to-market strategy tightly focused on the leading companies in the industry. Our position was considerably strengthened in December when we acquired QWES.com, the technology innovator in premium IP service provisioning and Quality of Service (QoS). Simply stated, service providers cannot deliver next-generation, differentiated services, such as packet voice, or support for application service providers without the service level agreements and guarantees such premium services require. The PolicyPoint TM IP service provisioning platform provides breakthrough QoS capabilities that enable service level agreements to be defined, implemented, and monitored in a rapid and cost-effective manner. The acquisition of QWES.com also provides Natural MicroSystems with complementary expertise and technologies in remote provisioning, high-performance real-time processing, ATM, and multi-protocol internetworking. Our target market segments are large and growing fast. Our sales and service teams are better equipped and better focused. Our product strategy is tightly linked to our major accounts and their needs. The strategic changes and initiatives of 1999 have created the platform for more consistent, predictable, and sustained growth and profitability for Natural MicroSystems, as well as enhanced value for our shareholders. I am very proud to be part of Natural MicroSystems and am thankful to all our people for the talent, good humor, energy, and commitment they bring to work every day. These are the ingredients of the secret sauce that will make the year ahead one of substantial growth, important industry contribution, and value creation.
We are deeply appreciative of our customers’ support and their reliance on Natural MicroSystems as a valued and essential strategic partner and we are strongly committed to their continued success. Finally we are grateful to you, our shareholders, for investing in Natural MicroSystems. We welcome your continued support as we move closer to fulfilling our vision. Sincerely,
Bob Schechter,
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