SAN FRANCISCO — (August 29, 2002) Critical Path, Inc. (CPTH), a global leader in Internet communications, today announced that Italian multimedia giant SEAT Pagine Gialle S.p.A., a division of Telecom Italia, has migrated more than 10 million of its email subscribers to Critical Path's messaging solution. The migration from a major competitor's email product — which was successfully executed by Critical Path's professional services organization in eight days and with no downtime — ultimately reduced the hardware needed to support these 10 million mailboxes by 75 percent, significantly reducing the cost of operations.
The 10 million subscribers are customers of two of SEAT's most popular media properties, leading Italian Internet Service Provider Tin.it, and Virgilio, Italy's number one portal as measured by unique page views. The decision to migrate from the incumbent messaging solution to Critical Path was based on a very competitive technology review. Critical Path won the contract based on the impressive performance exhibited by the CP(TM) Messaging Server in a series of tests designed to measure key factors including reliability, scalability and performance.
"The migration to Critical Path's messaging solution was an important success for our Tin.it and Virgilio properties," said Maurizio Irlando, engineering manager of SEAT's Internet Technology division. "We were very impressed with Critical Path during our review process, and we were very pleased with the effectiveness of the migration and the reduction in hardware needed to maintain these email boxes."
According to G. Mario Bobba, vice president of Critical Path for Southern Europe, "SEAT's decision to switch to the Critical Path messaging solution has delivered significant technological and economic benefits. By enabling SEAT to run its email service for millions of subscribers on only one-fourth of their original server hardware, they have been able to significantly reduce operational and administrative costs. In addition, the seamless migration to Critical Path's messaging platform is a testament to the skill of the Critical Path professional services organization."
About SEAT Pagine Gialle S.p.A
SEAT Pagine Gialle is a multimedia force with international operations not only in traditional directories business, but also in the directory assistance (89.24.24), Internet, office products and services, business information and television businesses. The company's properties are organized into six corporate areas that group the companies and products based on areas of responsibility and business affinity.
For over 70 years, SEAT Pagine Gialle has put forward ideas for communication. It is a success story based on a brand that is familiar to everyone, a sales network employing 2,000 persons, a technology that is constantly evolving and a database that includes 20 million households and 3 million professional operators.
About Critical Path, Inc.
Critical Path, Inc. (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, 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 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," 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, 2001, and the Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter and six month period ended June March 30, 2002, both 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. All other trademarks are the property of their holders.
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For additional information, contact:
Michelle Cox
Horn Group, Inc.
415.905.4039
mcox@horngroup.com Shane Dolgin
Critical Path, Inc.
415.541.2661
shane.dolgin@cp.net
Ernst van der Ploeg
Regional Sales Director
For Critical Path Netherlands
+31 (0 6 512 77060 phone
+31 (0) 6 105 48013 fax
A Global Leader in Internet Communications