SAN FRANCISCO — Critical Path, Inc. (Nasdaq: CPTH), a global leader in digital communications software and services, today announced that Virgin.net, a leading Internet service provider in Europe, has selected the Critical Path Hosted Messaging Service to power its email services. This gives Virgin.net the ability to offer consumer and small business subscribers advanced Personal Information Management (PIM) and messaging applications, ranging from email to wireless access to contact information.
"This new service enables us to offer our customers the very latest in advanced messaging services while Virgin.net focuses on what we do best, providing customers fast, reliable access to the Internet and a host of additional value added online services," said Alex Dale, Managing Director of Virgin.net. "Critical Path's service gives us the flexibility to quickly bring sophisticated new services to market without a major up front investment in development and infrastructure. This allows us to offer the best possible service to all our customers".
Critical Path, which launched its next-generation messaging service in March, offers the industry's only carrier-grade, integrated outsourced messaging solution. The suite of integrated applications, based on the industry-leading Critical Path software, includes email, wireless access, calendaring, centralized personal address book, to-do lists, dynamic alerts, anti-spam & anti-virus protection and a complete billing provisioning and reporting system. Critical Path's standards-based messaging services are accessible from mobile devices, desktop clients, and browser-based interfaces. Critical Path also provides access to subscribers who use Pocket PC-based mobile devices.
"Our service is a cost-effective, reliable way for service providers to rapidly offer the very latest messaging applications without the massive IT infrastructure or operations investments typically needed for such capabilities," said Tracy Currie, executive vice president and general manager, hosted messaging at Critical Path. "Virgin.net will be able to accelerate their time-to-market and deliver an unparalleled range of innovative and highly competitive services by outsourcing their messaging to Critical Path."
Critical Path is widely acknowledged as the leader in hosted messaging services, which it pioneered in 1997. Its service is built on Critical Path's Communications Platform, recognized as providing the industry's highest scalability and reliability - at the lowest total cost of ownership. It offers a comprehensive set of messaging solutions for carriers, service providers and enterprises, supporting functionality for delegated administration, detailed reporting, billing, and subscriber usage analysis.
Critical Path's service is hosted in HP's data centers around the world, delivers industry-leading service levels and is offered jointly by Critical Path and HP.
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
About Virgin.net
Virgin.net (www.virgin.net) was launched in 1996 and is the fifth largest ISP (Internet Service Provider) in the UK. With over half a million customers, Virgin.net provides the tools and support required for fast, efficient connection to the Internet. Virgin.net provides a range of Internet access options including Pay as You Go, Unmetered access (24seven) and Broadband. Virgin.net is a joint venture between The Virgin Group and ntl.
Forward-Looking Statements:
This press release contains forward-looking statements by the Company and its executives regarding our future strategic, operating and financial plans, anticipated or projected revenues, markets and strategies for sale of our products and services, plans related to global sales efforts, anticipated benefits of strategic relationships with partners, our ability to compete in the global marketplace, endorsements of our product and service offerings by our customers and partners, the performance, scalability, interoperability and other features and benefits of our product and service offerings, industry trends and changing market standards, market and customer requirements and the ability of our products and services to meet the business needs of our customers, ability of our customers to achieve operational efficiency and cost savings through deployment of products and services and the overall market for products and service offerings like ours. The words and expressions "look forward to," "will," "expect," "plan," "believe," "seek," "strive for," "anticipate," "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 and strategic objectives, competitive technologies and our ability to attract and retain customers, the ability of our technology to address customer demands, changes in economic and market conditions, risks associated with continued compliance with national exchange listing requirements, risks associated with international operations, 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 the Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2003, all as may be amended from time to time.
Note to Editors: Critical Path and the Critical Path logo are the trademarks of Critical Path, Inc.
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For additional information, contact:
For Reporters:
Critical Path, Inc.
Jim Fulton
415.541.2524
jim.fulton@criticalpath.net
For Investors:
Critical Path, Inc.
Mike Bishop
415.541.2619
mike.bishop@criticalpath.net