Sonic Foundry Hires Affinito to Lead Media Systems Division

Sonic Foundry (NASDAQ: SOFO), a leading provider of rich media software, systems and services, today announced it has selected 20-year industry veteran Howard Affinito to lead its Media Systems Division, a business unit that expands Sonic Foundry's reach into the government, entertainment, corporate and education sectors.

Under Affinito's leadership, Sonic Foundry will demonstrate the first software platform to enable security organizations to quickly gather and integrate disparate forms of personal identification information into a single, unified profile at the upcoming Government Video Technology Expo in Washington, D.C. (Booth #835) on November 28-29, 2001. Affinito, who has helped lead the entrenchment and market dominance of several industry-leading companies, such as CBS, Westinghouse Electric Corporation, printCafe and MediaSite, takes the helm of Sonic Foundry's new Media Systems Division as general manager and senior vice president effective today.

"Howard's strong business development, sales, systems and operations experience will enable Sonic Foundry to quickly respond to pressing needs in the rich media marketplace," said Rimas Buinevicius, CEO of Sonic Foundry. "His prior accomplishments and experience are impressive and will be fully utilized to help us build a successful business model focused on rapid deployment of full scale media publishing and analysis systems to key vertical markets such as the government sector."

In October, Sonic Foundry completed the acquisition of MediaSite, a Pittsburgh Pennsylvania based pioneer of automated media indexing and multi-modal biometric analysis software. Combined with Sonic's industry and award-winning media capture and processing technology, the newly formed Media Systems Division will be introducing its first integrated solution targeted towards the unified capture and analysis of biometric, media and database identification information. Future applications will continue to build upon the core Sonic Foundry software platform, which enables customers to more cost-effectively manage the entire continuum of rich-media data flow — from capture to analysis to interaction — with a single platform.

Affinito brings a cache of impressive successes and experience to Sonic Foundry's senior management team, including most recently as Vice President, Global 2000 Development at printCafe, a leading supplier of print e-procurement software systems, where he was responsible for the development of e-procurement sales channels to Global 2000 companies. During his tenure, sales to this market segment increased by 300 percent. Prior to that, he secured the single largest software sale in MediaSite's history as vice president and general manager, domestic sales, helping propel the company as one of the industry's leaders and respected providers of media indexing and analysis software. Affinito is the recipient of numerous other achievements and industry awards during his career, demonstrating resilient leadership and direct bottom-line impact to his previous employers, which include CBS Corp., Westinghouse Electric Corp., and Eastern Telecom Corp.