SAN FRANCISCO (June 11, 2002) – Having established its market leadership in carrier messaging, Critical Path Inc. (Nasdaq: CPTH), a global leader in Internet communications, today announced its intention to aggressively target the enterprise messaging market with its “Critical Move” initiative. The company is offering an enterprise messaging solution that provides more flexibility and extensibility at a lower total cost of ownership than can be achieved with traditional groupware products such as those offered by Microsoft and IBM. The new Critical Path Enterprise Messaging Suite combines the company’s proven messaging products with integration technology, migration methodologies, tools and services that help provide a smooth transition from existing messaging systems over to Critical Path’s.
The Critical Path Enterprise Messaging Suite, which can be delivered as a hosted service or licensed software, is offered directly to enterprises or through channel partners as part of Critical Path’s new Partner Program announced today (see separate press release).
In addition to email, calendars and personal address books, the Critical Path messaging solution includes a unique, flexible presentation framework that can provide centralized access to its services via Microsoft Outlook, the Web, wireless devices and voice. The framework also lets the suite be easily integrated with application servers such as BEA’s WebLogic as well as with enterprise portals.
The Critical Path Enterprise Messaging Suite builds on Critical Path’s success with its CP™ Messaging Server, which today powers more than 150 million email boxes around the world and is widely recognized in the industry as offering the lowest total-cost-of-ownership.1
It also leverages Critical Path’s experience serving the messaging needs of hundreds of service providers, carriers and enterprises – including the #1 providers in more than 20 countries.
Addressing the need for flexibility in deploying messaging, Critical Path’s messaging suite frees enterprises from the restrictive “one size fits all” method of provisioning messaging services that is imposed by traditional groupware. With Critical Path’s Enterprise Messaging Suite, enterprises can easily customize the sets of services provided to each particular group or individual, reducing the amount of costly administration, training and helpdesk support needed.
Designed for scalability and based on open standards, the Critical Path Enterprise Messaging Suite is an extensible platform built to accommodate the evolution to new messaging and Web applications, such as enterprise instant messaging, wireless messaging, unified messaging and Web services. It is being extended through partners such as BEA.
“BEA and Critical Path are excited about delivering the next-generation of Internet communications solutions for the enterprise,” said Scott Edgington, vice president and general manager, BEA Global Partner Alliances. “Enterprise customers require unparalleled product performance and reliability. Add to that the need for cost effective deployment and management of these applications. The combination of Critical Path’s messaging solutions with the BEA WebLogic Enterprise Platform will provide a world-class messaging solution with the lowest possible cost of ownership.”
The Critical Move Program
Currently there are more than 100 million active enterprise groupware seats worldwide. Industry analysts and a growing chorus of IT professionals report that enterprises are wrestling to control spiraling messaging costs and provide more services at the same or reduced budgets. At the same time, they are also being driven to support an increasingly distributed workforce, increase the flexibility and security of their systems, and quickly respond to changing technology and business environments.
According to Matt Cain, senior vice president, Web & Collaboration Strategies, at META Group, “Organizations looking to cut costs are beginning to scrutinize email systems. Enterprises should exploit cost models to help ascertain the total cost of ownership of a mail system and thereby begin to devise cost-saving strategies.”2
While traditional groupware applications offer many features beyond the core set of email, calendars, and personal address books, most of these capabilities go unused despite adding significant costs to enterprises both in terms of server hardware and IT staff requirements. Critical Move addresses this challenge directly by helping partners deliver an integrated enterprise messaging suite with the core functionality needed to meet current and future needs. Partners participating in the Critical Move program will be able to capture not only new sources of revenue, but also take advantage of three key trends in the messaging industry:
* A move towards extranets and communication portals – Portals enable a simple, seamless way to conduct eBusiness, and require standards-based systems to ensure that users accessing the extranet do not require proprietary technology to do so.
* Extending messaging services to non-knowledge workers – To improve communications, more and more enterprises are electing to deploy core messaging functionality such as email, calendars and personal address books to non-knowledge users including factory workers, delivery personnel, etc.
* Enabling Web services – Web services offer even greater access to the enterprise. However, as more users are added, per-user costs must be driven down to avoid creating a financial burden that enterprises cannot support.
According to Patricia Hume, Critical Path’s senior vice president of partners and channels, “We designed our new Partner Program to help our partners deliver leadership solutions where there are significant market opportunities. With the Critical Move initiative, partners can now offer enterprises a cost-effective and worthwhile alternative to legacy messaging solutions, and in the process help them deploy a standards-based messaging platform that supports emerging applications.”
The messaging solution is available today, and the company plans to make migration methodologies and tools available within 60 days.
About Critical Path, Inc.
Critical Path, Inc. (Nasdaq: CPTH) delivers software and services that maximize the value of Internet communications. The company provides messaging and collaboration 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. Critical Path's customers include more than 700 enterprises, 190 carriers and service providers, eight national postal authorities and 35 government agencies. Critical Path is headquartered in San Francisco with offices throughout North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America. More information on Critical Path can be found at www.cp.net.
Forward-Looking Statements:
This press release contains forward-looking statements by the Company and its executives regarding endorsements of our product and service offerings by our customers and partners, the performance, scalability and interoperability of our product and service offerings, industry trends, market and customer requirements and the ability of our products and services to meet the business needs of our customers, and the market for products and services 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 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, 2001, and the Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 30, 2002, as may be amended from time to time.