News/Events

Mirapoint Introduces New Directory Server to Enable Service Providers to Rapidly Deploy New Messaging-Based Services
Austar Communications Will Use New Product As a Cornerstone for Rolling Out Messaging Services Across Australia

SUNNYVALE, Calif. - June 18, 2001 – Mirapoint Inc., a leading provider of Internet messaging infrastructure products, today introduced its new Mirapoint Internet Directory, the industry’s first directory appliance optimized for messaging. With the addition of the Internet Directory, Mirapoint now offers a more complete platform for service providers to quickly deploy messaging-based services such as unified communications, wireless messaging, instant messaging, and presence notification and alerts that integrate with business applications.

The Mirapoint Internet Directory is an integrated system of software and hardware and is LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) V3 compliant. It enables service providers to maintain user addresses and authentication information across a variety of applications. Used in conjunction with Mirapoint’s Internet Message Servers for message storage and delivery and Internet Message Directors for message routing and security, Mirapoint now provides service providers with a more powerful and flexible messaging architecture.

The need for a secure, comprehensive messaging platform is increasing as the number of messaging-based applications continues to grow at a significant rate. According to Yankee Group, a market research firm in Boston, the market for wireless messaging will grow 40 percent to 60 percent annually over the next three years. In addition, Ovum, a London-based market research firm, forecasts there will be 218 million active users of unified messaging by 2007, up from 5.5 million in 2001.

“Directory-empowered messaging will become essential to link and coordinate mission-critical messaging applications across multiple clients,” said Dana Gardner, research director for messaging and collaboration services at Aberdeen Group in Boston. “With the addition of the Internet Directory, Mirapoint has evolved its infrastructure to make it easier for service providers to deliver businesses and consumers secure, policy-driven and managed communications services across desktop, mobile, and handheld devices.”

The Internet Directory enables service providers to integrate and bring to market messaging-based services rapidly and easily. Austar Communications, one of Australia’s leading regional ISPs and a leading provider of e-mail and Web hosting services for retail and business customers is currently using Mirapoint’s high performance messaging servers to provide all of its customers with high-speed message access. Austar will enhance its messaging services with Mirapoint’s new Internet Directory.

“We have had great success with Mirapoint’s messaging products,” said Dean Walters, technology and infrastructure manager, Austar Communications. “With the addition of the Internet Directory, we will now be able to quickly provision users across multiple services, which is critical as we strive towards our goal of providing our more than 400,000 satellite pay TV subscribers with access to interactive services via their television sets. The installation of the Internet Directory into our existing network has been extremely fast –making the rollout within our organization pain free.”

Optimized for Messaging
Until now, developers and providers of messaging services have primarily used directories that take too long to deploy, require too many experts to set-up and manage, and do not have the performance required for complex messaging environments.

“Mirapoint has taken the complexity out of deploying messaging-based services,” said Satish Ramachandran, chairman and CEO of Mirapoint. “With the addition of our Internet Directory, we continue to add value to our portfolio of products. We developed a directory server that incorporated all of the Mirapoint hallmarks of high-performance, high-scalability and ease-of-use to address our customers’ requirements for a turnkey system that can handle the large volume of users generated by the uptake of new messaging-based services.”

The Internet Directory’s fast look-up capabilities allow customers to handle high levels of message traffic that result from unified communications and wireless messaging services. It also enables service providers to offer managed services by integrating messaging with business applications such as CRM, ERP and collaborative commerce. In addition, it has the ability to work with a service provider’s provisioning and billing applications.

Mirapoint Internet Directory Capabilities
As with all Mirapoint products, the Internet Directory is based on Mirapoint’s MessageBase™ message store that combines a file system and database for high performance and reliability. Furthermore, the Internet Directory greatly simplifies the complex use and integration of LDAP directories for other applications via a common subscriber base. With a built-in schema for Internet messaging, the Internet Directory can scale up to millions of users as needed. Other key capabilities include advanced transactional replication, bulk import/export, integrated database backup and restore, support for internationalization, reliable data storage and comprehensive management tools.

Pricing and Availability
The Mirapoint Internet Directory is available now worldwide as either a standalone appliance or as a feature license on other Mirapoint products. Customers pay a base license fee plus per-user pricing.

About Mirapoint
Founded in 1997, Mirapoint designs and manufactures specialized, dedicated Internet messaging solutions optimized for fast deployment in service provider and enterprise environments worldwide. Mirapoint's cost-effective and modular solutions provide customers with high performance, high reliability, built-in security and easy integration with legacy messaging infrastructure. Named to the Upside 100 in 2001 for Internet Infrastructure, Mirapoint is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., with offices throughout North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. For more information on Mirapoint, call 800.937.8118 or visit its Web site at http://www.mirapoint.com.

2007 Mirapoint, Inc.  All rights reserved. All company and product names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.

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