PEABODY, Mass., August 24, 2004 - ScanSoft, Inc. (Nasdaq: SSFT), the global leader of speech and imaging solutions, today announced it has appointed Robert N. Wise as vice president, professional services. In this role, Mr. Wise will manage all aspects of ScanSoft's global professional services business. ScanSoft is widely recognized as having the speech industry's leading professional services organization with significant experience in speech applications, user interface design and industry best practices. With more than 1,000 implementations that combined handle more than five billion calls per year, the ScanSoft team has built more speech applications with and through partners than any other company in the world.

"With demonstrated experience leading professional services organizations in high-growth periods and a dedicated commitment to customer success and satisfaction, Bob Wise is an ideal leader for ScanSoft's professional services organization," said Paul Ricci, chairman and CEO, of ScanSoft. "We are passionate about delivering exceptional results to our customers and Bob brings to the company a unique combination of process excellence, partner-friendly delivery models and technical expertise."

Bob Wise is a dynamic executive who has established a successful history of executing strategic initiatives across multiple businesses and industries. His leadership skills have driven significant growth and expansion in numerous organizations, including ThinkFree, USWeb, Novell, USConnect and others.

"I am excited and honored to lead this world-class organization," said Bob Wise. "Speech applications are clearly a mainstream part of today's customer service applications and ScanSoft has proven expertise and leadership in this market. I look forward to quickly getting immersed in our many active customer engagements and helping expand ScanSoft's capabilities to benefit customers, partners and our employees."

Mr. Wise comes to ScanSoft from ThinkFree, a California-based application and Web services software company, where he has served as chief executive officer. In this role, he grew and managed international development teams and executed on strategic plans to launch ThinkFree Office - the largest international Microsoft Office alternative for the Mac, PC or Linux.

Previously, Mr. Wise spent four years at USWeb/marchFIRST, a technology and management consulting firm, where he served as chief technology officer and chief operating officer. At USWeb, he helped grow the organization from 50 employees to 11,000 services and consulting personnel operating in 50 offices across 15 countries. Mr. Wise had direct responsibility for the discipline and leadership of more than 8,000 professional services staff that comprised the organization's technology practice. In addition, he established a widely respected, worldwide strategic services and alliance program that included many of the world's most influential technology companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Sun, BEA, SAP, Oracle, NCR, JD Edwards, and Interwoven.

Mr. Wise has also served in both executive and engineering capacities at Novell, USConnect and Boeing Computer Services. At Novell, as vice president of worldwide consulting, he developed and deployed an international professional services team to support the company's largest, most complex client engagements and to promote Novell technology to other professional service organizations. During his tenure, he was instrumental in growing the business from zero to $25 million in revenue in less than two years. Similarly, at USConnect, one of the nation's largest systems integrators, he expanded the services organization from two people to one thousand employees and grew the business under his leadership to more than $200 million in revenue.

Mr. Wise holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Puget Sound and has served as a representative to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He will be based out of ScanSoft's Boston offices.

About ScanSoft, Inc.

ScanSoft, Inc. (Nasdaq: SSFT) is the global leader of speech and imaging solutions that are used to automate a wide range of manual processes - saving time, increasing worker productivity and improving customer service. For more information regarding ScanSoft products and technologies, please visit www.ScanSoft.com.

ScanSoft, SpeechWorks, and the ScanSoft logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of ScanSoft, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. All other company or product names may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Contact Information