CAMPBELL, CA, Nov. 3, 2009 (Marketwire) --

CAMPBELL, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 11/03/09 -- Altus Learning Systems, a leader in enterprise video search solutions for sales enablement and knowledge sharing, today announced that storage and data management solutions leader NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTAP) has used enterprise video search software from Altus to stage a formerly live sales training event "virtually" -- and saved $1.5 million over the course of the three-day event. Recently, NetApp leveraged the power of Altus vSearch(TM) by replacing the planned multimillion-dollar live event with a virtual event that cost the company 90 percent less, and was equally effective in sharing knowledge and product information with NetApp sales and partner engineers worldwide.

"To streamline our sales process, we determined that the most efficient method was through enabling our systems engineers, resellers, and OEM partners to become more knowledgeable, more motivated, and more productive so they can deliver the best presales guidance humanly possible," said Jim Coleman, System Engineering project manager at NetApp. "Based on the breadth and new features associated with our new products, we had to empower our partners' employees with the same product knowledge and ongoing support that we gave our own internal people. Altus vSearch provides us the knowledge, technology, accountability, measurability, security, and control to do that. Without Altus, we wouldn't be able to support our resellers and partners as aggressively and successfully as we do."

The Altus solution enables NetApp's in-house systems engineers as well as several hundred NetApp partner companies employing thousands of technical sales engineers to become better informed, stay technically proficient, and sell more effectively.

While historically NetApp has been a major organizer of multiple worldwide technical sales enablement events in the United States and abroad, the company determined in 2006 that it could use the SaaS-based (Software as a Service) Altus solution to combine the inherent advantages of live worldwide technical sales enablement events with the virtual benefits of fully searchable, referenceable, reusable media files, presentations, and expert-based knowledge that can be archived and reused for months or years after the event.