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MIRAPOINT LEADS EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS WORLDWIDE TO SAFER, MORE SECURE EMAIL SYSTEMS
College of William & Mary Praises Mirapoint Solutions for Protection from Viruses, Spam, and Downtime

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Oct. 20, 2003 - Mirapoint, a leading provider of messaging solutions for service provider, enterprise, education, and government customers, today announced that more than 50 educational institutions worldwide now employ Mirapoint products to boost the security and reliability of their message networks. The College of William & Mary recently deployed the Mirapoint Message Director and Mirapoint Message Server to protect the student body and faculty against e-mail borne viruses and other attacks, as well as deliver more reliable campus-wide email services. The Williamsburg, Virginia-based college deployed the company's products in time for the beginning of the 2003-2004 school year and has reported no downtime or system malfunctions related to recent spam or computer viruses, such as the SoBig attacks.
"Before we started working with Mirapoint, we were just getting pounded by e-mail borne viruses," said Chris Peck, manager of UNIX services at the College of William & Mary. "Last spring, our Help Desk received 500 calls in a two-week period from students having problems with viruses on their computers. We sent out a notice to the students to let them know that we would handle the situation promptly, and had a line wrapped around the corner with machines stacked up everywhere."

As William & Mary was looking for an anti-virus system, they decided to also replace their existing mail server, which services approximately 15,000 accounts for faculty and students. William & Mary officials learned of other in-state universities that underwent similar system overhauls and contacted officials at James Madison University and Virginia Tech University for recommendations on potential vendors for both products. Both universities had implemented Mirapoint solutions and were very pleased with the results. After considering anti-virus products from Symantec and the Sun One Messaging Server for email services, the university decided to go with Mirapoint's Message Director, a turnkey email security appliance with powerful boundary control to defend against spam, virus and hacker attacks. In addition, the university deployed the Mirapoint Message Server, a dedicated email appliance that blends high-performance software, a secure hardened operating system and redundant hardware components.

"Mirapoint's traction in the education market over the last several months has been very impressive," said Robert Mahowald, Research Manager at IDC. "Cost-efficiency, reliability and manageability have become increasingly important to customers. Federated email and security solutions like Mirapoint's integrated hardware and software appliances that can deliver on all three are well-positioned to attract customers in education and other markets."

"The Mirapoint Message Director and Message Server were the best solutions on the market to meet the demands of the university," Peck said. "Because of the large volume of mail our system handles, we spent a lot of time managing and maintaining our previous mail server. When we started looking at other products, our goal was to get a solution that did not require our constant attention and time. The fact that Mirapoint's is an 'appliance' relieves us with management issues and minimizes our chances of downtime. We're probably close to saving an engineer by going with Mirapoint's solutions. In addition, we're extremely happy with their customer service."

Since William & Mary purchased Mirapoint's products, more than 600,000 viruses have been captured, many of which are related to the disastrous SoBig virus. Universities like William & Mary present unique situations for email security because students leave for summer vacations and holidays, often returning with computers contaminated with viruses that originated outside of campus. Due to the ever-changing nature of the university environment, providing consistent security for all users can be difficult. Mirapoint's approach with the Message Director and Message Server provides universities the flexibility needed to address a broad range of security risks, while including ongoing network-based updates to ensure the latest and most up-to-date protection against threats, like viruses and spam.

Delivering Cost-effective Email Services to Campuses Worldwide
Educational institutions' message networks need to provide email and related services for different users including students, faculty and alumni. As a result, schools need a scalable, cost-effective platform that can be tailored to meet these diverse user requirements, while still being secure and easy-to-manage.

Mirapoint is the only solution that combines enterprise-class groupware features and carrier-grade scalability with integrated email security protection. With Mirapoint, your institution can benefit from proven 99.999% uptime, world-class SPECmail performance, and industry-leading low TCO (Source: Radicati Group).

Mirapoint works with nearly 50 educational institutions worldwide, including University of Georgia, Hiroshima University, Troy State University, Washington University, University of Cincinnati, University of Tokyo, College of William & Mary, Hong Kong Polytechnic, Temple University, University of California - Riverside, Queensland University of Technology, University of Maryland, Palo Alto Unified School District, James Madison University, Virginia Tech, Wayne State University, Central Michigan University, California State University - Northridge, and California Polytechnic State University.

About Mirapoint
Mirapoint® is a leader in solutions for message networks used by service provider, enterprise, education and government institutions. Customers use Mirapoint solutions to build message networks that intelligently route, store, access and manage Internet messages, including email. Mirapoint is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., with offices throughout North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. The company has more than 600 customers worldwide. For more information on Mirapoint, 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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