Akonix Accelerates Market Leadership with Second Straight Record Quarter and Milestone Year.

SAN DIEGO -- Revenues, Customers and Deployments Continue to Grow as Enterprises Achieve Results with Akonix's IM Management Solutions

Akonix Systems, Inc., the market leader in security, management and integration for enterprise instant messaging (IM), today announced a second straight quarter of record financial performance to close 2004. Revenue grew over 300% from the same period in 2003, contributing to total revenue growth of over 100% for the year. During the fourth quarter of 2004, Akonix added 200,000 new seats of its award-winning products, bringing its industry leading customer base to 700,000 seats across 500 organizations worldwide.

Research shows that instant messaging has entered virtually all corporate environments, most frequently brought to work by employees on their own using free, public IM clients. Since 2002, Akonix customers have been able to take control of IM use and integrate presence and IM communications into their core infrastructure as a secure and authorized business tool. Akonix enabled that transition by providing protection against malicious code sent over IM, auditing and logging capabilities for compliance with industry and federal regulations, and enforcing internal controls for legal, confidentiality and corporate standards across both public and enterprise IM infrastructure.

"Instant messaging is rapidly becoming an indispensable business communications tool and those trends are forecast to accelerate in 2005," said Peter Shaw, CEO of Akonix. "Akonix's customers are among the leaders in leveraging this new technology, taking advantage of the piece of mind that comes from safe, secure IM to encourage broad adoption for both internal and external communications. Akonix is proud to have worked with some of the most innovative companies in the world to set the standard for security, control and compliance for this important new technology."

Akonix's customer base includes many of the world's largest global corporations across industries including Financial Services, Technology, Energy, Media, Health Care and Manufacturing. Some notable examples include:

--Energy trading and distribution, where Akonix is the market leader for IM compliance in this highly regulated industry;

--High technology, where global technology leaders select Akonix to protect intellectual property and comply with regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley;

--Services, where one of the world's largest IT consulting and security firms relies on Akonix to protect its own network;

--Media and entertainment, where three of the industry's largest companies use Akonix software to protect their intellectual property from illegal distribution.

In addition to Akonix's record financial results, growth and customer wins, the company exhibited its leadership through a number of other key accomplishments in 2004, including:

--Delivered major releases of both Akonix L7 Enterprise and Enforcer, adding new capabilities to support greater use of enterprise IM systems and support global deployments;

--Continuously protected its customers from IM and P2P security threats with the industry's first dedicated security team and the only automatic filtering capability that dynamically provides protection for Akonix customers from identified malicious content and spim attacks within instant messages;

--Global market growth, adding customers around the world and establishing European operations with headquarters in the UK;

--Launched Akonix L7 Builder, a breakthrough product that leverages the company's core IM technology to enable advanced applications that integrate presence and IM into existing workflows and enterprise systems;

--Recognized for technology leadership, including being selected as Network World's Clear Choice winner among IM management products, named Best Messaging Product at Microsoft's TechEd, and identified by Red Herring as one of the 100 Most Innovative technology firms.

For further information on Akonix and its IM management and security solutions, including how your organization can join the list of industry leading firms taking advantage of safe, secure instant messaging, please visit www.akonix.com.

About Akonix

Akonix is the leading provider of enterprise-class business solutions for leveraging the power of multi-network enterprise instant messaging. Akonix's award-winning products leverage patent-pending core technology, an advanced IM application development platform, and certified strategic partnerships to deliver multi-network management, security, integration and compliance capabilities across all major IM systems, including America Online(R) AIM and ICQ, Microsoft MSN, Yahoo! Messenger, Microsoft(R) Live Communications Server, Reuters Messaging, IBM Lotus Instant Messaging (Sametime) and Jabber.

More than 500 customers in Financial Services, Telecommunications, Energy, Technology, Healthcare and Entertainment depend on Akonix to manage, secure and enable IM for over 700,000 enterprise users. Akonix is the preferred IM management solution of some of the world's largest companies, including Cingular Wireless, EMC and ING.

Akonix is widely recognized as the technology and market innovator with awards for its L7 Enterprise IM gateway from Windows & .NET Magazine, Network World, eWeek, SC Magazine, PC Magazine and Red Herring. Akonix is backed by leading venture capital firms Menlo Ventures, Mission Ventures, Palomar Ventures and Windward Ventures, who collectively manage over $3.5 billion in capital.