Apogee Networks' Financial Management Solutions Expanded to Manage Network Storage, E-Mail and Internet Access Costs.

Business & Technology Editors

NetWorld+Interop 2002 Las Vegas 

Booth 7937

LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 7, 2002

Enables IT to deliver accurate cost transparency for

shared services to the enterprise

Apogee Networks Inc., the leading provider of financial management solutions for shared IT services today announced its NetCountant(R) platform, a usage-based accounting and chargeback management system initially focused on managing Network bandwidth costs, has been expanded to manage three additional shared IT services: Data Storage, E-mail and Internet access.

"Escalating demand for shared IT (Information Technology) resources coupled with increasing budget pressure is forcing IT departments to emphasize cost management strategies, ensuring IT resources are better aligned to justify business demand," says Jason Briggs, Senior Analyst, the Yankee Group. "This has created an increasing need to more accurately track shared resource consumption of service delivery, and ultimately charge back the usage to the appropriate users - thus increasing cost transparency within the enterprise."

"Usage-based accounting and chargeback enables CIOs and CFOs to gain greater financial control of their IT investments, increase visibility into the Network's performance and change user behavior of IT resources," says Pablo Tapia, Chairman, Apogee Networks. "This represents a major opportunity for CIOs and CFOs to implement "best practice" accounting principles to identify and accurately allocate consumption to users and business units. By linking cost directly to consumption, IT can establish true cost transparency. Now by closely aligning consumption of Network, Storage and Application resources with business objectives, our customers typically generate a significant ROI within the first year of deployment."

Apogee Networks Bandwidth Solution provides Global 2000 enterprises with the only comprehensive platform providing unprecedented cost visibility, enabling IT to modify usage behavior and more effectively contain current Network costs.

Apogee Networks Storage Solution provides complete and intuitive billing capabilities enabling the IT organization to allocate costs for the use of Network Storage. Costs for each business unit, application or end-user are based on the amount of storage allocated, bytes transferred, or storage used.

Apogee Networks E-mail Solution enables IT to construct an equitable allocation that takes into account the amount of bandwidth required to deliver E-mail messages between servers, the amount of disk space needed to store E-mail, the number of messages sent and the number of active E-mail accounts.

Apogee Networks Internet Access Solution allows IT to provide accurate and detailed billing for the use of Internet access services within the enterprise. It also tracks and bills VPN use by remote users who access corporate network services via the Internet; as well as extranet use of corporate web services.

About Apogee Networks

Apogee Networks, Inc. is the recognized leader in financial management solutions for shared IT services including Bandwidth, Data Storage, E-mail services and Internet access. Its enterprise-proven, usage-based accounting and charge back management solutions enable Finance and IT management to achieve unprecedented network effectiveness and significantly improve financial performance in the provision of shared IT services. Apogee Networks solutions give CIOs/CFOs greater financial control of the network, increased visibility into network-dependent IT services and the ability to improve user effectiveness - and behavior - when utilizing these services.

Additionally, these solutions provide CIOs and CFOs with an excellent opportunity to implement "best practice" accounting principles whereby all network consumption can be accounted for and fairly allocated to users.

A winner of numerous industry awards, Apogee Networks includes Fortune 1000 companies and leading educational institutions as its customers. Founded in 1997, Apogee Networks investors include Banc of America, BBVA, Cisco Systems, Fidelity Ventures Limited, Granite Ventures, INTEL, Net One Systems Co, Oak Investment Partners, and several private investors. For additional information call 1-888-APOGEE3 (276-4333), 1-973-338-2300, or email [e-mail], or visit us at www.apogeenetworks.com.