Microsoft and Fenestrae to Provide Converged Communications Solution to Telcos

Cannes, France, Feb. 24, 2004 — Microsoft Corp. and Fenestrae today announced their collaboration to provide end-to-end hosted messaging and mobility for telecommunications service providers. As part of the solution Fenestrae has integrated its Microsoft®
.NET Connected certified Communication Server with Microsoft’s solution for Hosted Exchange 2003, enabling service providers to further increase average revenue per user (ARPU) by adding fax, SMS and MMS mobile alerts, WAP browsing, and mobile device synchronization services to their Hosted Exchange 2003 offering.

Hosted Exchange 2003 offers service providers a multiservice platform to build, deploy, deliver and manage rich enterprise-class e-mail communication services to enterprises, small and medium-sized businesses as well as consumers, thus allowing consolidation of dispersed mail systems onto a single platform to address their complete customer base. Microsoft and Fenestrae will offer service providers a platform through which they can reduce their operating costs while increasing revenues by delivering new value-added services that significantly increase end-user productivity.

Adding Fenestrae to the Solution for Hosted Exchange means that operators can service their entire customer base, broadening the mobile access capabilities that Windows Mobile (TM) -based devices offer to also include the vast numbers of mobile devices in use, including WAP 1.1 phones and SMS-enabled devices.

Service providers can offer mobile device synchronization services to users who want to work on e-mail, calendar, tasks and contacts information when they are mobile but not connected. Together, the Fenestrae and Microsoft Solution for Hosted Exchange 2003 offers operators an end-to-end solution for their complete user base to significantly drive mobile data usage and service adoption.

“We’re delighted to see Fenestrae continue to innovate through providing new solutions based on hosting Microsoft Exchange Server, bringing aspects of Microsoft Exchange to the more than one billion mobile phones in use today,” said Micheline Germanos, Web Services and hosting director at Microsoft EMEA. “Initial feedback from telcos has been extremely positive as there’s a direct line between this solution and its ability to drive incremental revenue for operators.”

With more than one billion text messages sent every day, SMS has become an important tool for many businesses. By integrating SMS messaging into Hosted Exchange 2003, users can now send and receive SMS messages from Microsoft Outlook®
and Outlook Web Access, while also ensuring SMS messages are archived with e-mails in a single information store. Users can configure their system to receive notifications by SMS if specified messages arrive in their mailbox. The solution even makes it possible to run SMS marketing campaigns by sending the same message to groups of users. Later this spring, Fenestrae also will add two-way MMS messaging to the solution, making it even more suited for marketing.

More than 120 million fax machines are in use worldwide. However, compared to e-mail, handling traditional faxes is cumbersome, with some studies estimating an average handling time of five to seven minutes per fax. By integrating fax into Hosted Exchange 2003, faxes can be sent just like e-mail, eliminating handling time and improving efficiency. In addition, by assigning a unique fax number to every mailbox, incoming faxes can automatically be delivered through the inbox, helping protect privacy, improving response times and enabling access to these important documents remotely. Since users send and receive all faxes via the Solution for Hosted Exchange with Fenestrae’s add-on, electronic copies are automatically archived.

The Mobility and Fax solution for Hosted Exchange 2003 is based on Fenestrae Communication Server technology in use today with companies in more than 60 countries. The solution is tightly integrated into the provisioning and management tools of the Solution for Hosted Exchange 2003. “Low TCO, high reliability and high scalability were our major objectives for this integration project,” said Eric van Beek, vice president of Global Sales & Services at Fenestrae. “We now have one-click deployment through the Microsoft Provisioning System and centralized management via Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM). We run off-the-shelf hardware and are able to support millions of mailboxes. The solution can also be easily integrated into service platforms like SMSCs and billing systems.” With the multiservice platform from Microsoft and Fenestrae, service providers can roll out services at a low cost to end-customer segments from consumers and small businesses to enterprise customers.

About Fenestrae

Founded in 1990, Fenestrae provides enterprise-class software solutions that allow companies to securely integrate mobile messaging and fax for every business application and user. With over 8,000 customers worldwide, Fenestrae has been a certified Microsoft Partner for over a decade, supplying messaging solutions for Microsoft enterprise customers.

Headquartered in the Netherlands, with additional offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Spain and Hong Kong, Fenestrae’s premier products are sold through a worldwide partner network covering more than 60 countries. For more information, visit http://www.fenestrae.com .

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software — any time, any place and on any device.

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