SAN FRANCISCO — (July 9, 2003) Critical Path, Inc. (Nasdaq: CPTH), a global leader in identity management and messaging software and services, today announced that the State of Louisiana's Department of Health and Hospitals has selected the Critical Path™ Meta-Directory to address two major initiatives. The Critical Path software will be used both to consolidate disease tracking data from clinical databases across the state in near-real time and to simplify migration of their internal user authentication system from Novell© NDS to Microsoft© Active Directory. As a result, the Department will be able to provide even faster response to public health emergencies while streamlining internal operations. Critical Path's comprehensive, out-of-the-box support for multi-vendor environments will enable the Department to deploy the solution without significant custom development, saving both time and money.
The Critical Path software is to be used in Louisiana's implementation of the National Electronic Disease Surveillance System (NEDSS), a homeland security initiative sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that mandates the deployment of disease surveillance systems by federal, state and local agencies. Critical Path's Meta-Directory will extract disease tracking data from widely distributed Microsoft Access databases and emergency contact information from Oracle Internet Directory systems in near real-time. The Critical Path software will consolidate all of the data into a single, up-to-date repository, where it can be quickly analyzed and made available via a web portal.
In addition, the Critical Path Meta-Directory will be used to migrate internal user authentication information from Novell NDS systems into new Microsoft Active Directory systems without disrupting existing operations. The flexibility and broad range of connectivity that is built into the Critical Path Meta-Directory will allow a single infrastructure to be used to address multiple initiatives. The architecture Critical Path is providing will also allow support for other solutions — such as password management — to be added incrementally.
To demonstrate how the Meta-Directory and its built-in connectors would enable the Department's various systems to be seamlessly connected without custom development, a proof of concept implementation was rapidly created by Critical Path. The speed and ease with which the software was installed and configured, as well as the Meta-Directory's ability to synchronize data in near real-time, distinguished Critical Path's solution from those of its competitors.
About Critical Path Meta-Directory
Critical Path's Meta-Directory is unique in its breadth of built-in connectors for major business systems — including directories from the industry's major vendors; databases from Oracle, Sybase, and IBM; enterprise applications such as SAP HR, Lotus Notes, and Microsoft Exchange; as well as IBM RACF mainframe security and other operating system platforms. In addition, its support for industry-standard languages such as Java, Perl and XML provides easy extensibility and frees organizations from having to learn proprietary scripting languages in order to integrate their own applications and data. As a result, the Critical Path Meta-Directory allows identity management solutions to be deployed more rapidly with significantly lower upfront and ongoing costs.
About Critical Path, Inc.
Critical Path, Inc. (Nasdaq: CPTH) is a global leader in digital communications software and services. The company provides messaging solutions — from wireless, secure and unified messaging to basic email and personal information management — as well as identity management solutions that simplify user profile management and strengthen information security. The standards-based Critical Path Communications Platform, built to perform reliably at the scale of public networks, delivers the industry's lowest total cost of ownership for messaging solutions and lays a solid foundation for next-generation communications services. Solutions are available on a hosted or licensed basis. Critical Path's customers include more than 700 enterprises, 200 carriers and service providers, eight national postal authorities and 35 government agencies. Critical Path is headquartered in San Francisco. More information can be found at www.criticalpath.net.
Forward-Looking Statements:
This press release contains forward-looking statements by the Company and its executives regarding the performance, security, scalability and interoperability of our product and service offerings, the ability of our customers to achieve cost savings in the provision of services, industry trends, market and customer requirements, the ability of our products and services to meet the business needs of our customers, the market for products and services like ours and the performance of our senior management in achieving strategic goals. The words and expressions "look forward to," "will," "expect," "plan," "believe," "seek," "strive for," "anticipate," hope," "estimate" and similar expressions are intended to identify the Company's forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. These risks include, but are not limited to, our evolving business strategy and the emerging and changing nature of the market for our products and services, our ability to deliver on our sales objectives, the ability of our technology and our competitors' technologies to address customer demands, changes in economic and market conditions, unplanned system interruptions and capacity constraints, software and service design defects. These and other risks and uncertainties are described in more detail in the Company's filings with the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission (www.sec.gov) made from time to time, including Critical Path's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2002,and Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended March 31, 2003, as may be amended from time to time, and all subsequent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (www.sec.gov).
Note to Editors: Critical Path and the Critical Path logo are the trademarks of Critical Path, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their holders.
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For additional information, contact:
For Reporters:
Critical Path, Inc.
Jim Fulton
408.541.2524
jim.fulton@criticalpath.net For Investors:
Critical Path, Inc.
Mike Bishop
415.541.2619
mike.bishop@criticalpath.net
Ernst van der Ploeg
Regional Sales Director
for Critical Path BENELUX
+31 (0) 6 512 77060 phone
+31 (0) 6 105 48013 fax
A Global Leader n Digital Communications Software and Services