ColdSpark Builds Momentum in Email Infrastructure Market; ColdSpark's SparkEngine Outperforms Competing Products and Paves the Way for New Email Infrastructure Solutions.

DENVER -- ColdSpark, dedicated to transforming email infrastructure for enterprises and network operators, announced that after completion of the first quarter of 2004, the company is showing continued growth and remarkable success in the enterprise market.

Over the last two quarters, ColdSpark has quadrupled revenues, experienced a greater than 80% win rate in major email infrastructure upgrades and exceeded its Q1 bookings target by 50%. ColdSpark continues to focus on dominating the enterprise and service provider markets with its unrivaled MTA and email application server platform, the SparkEngine, the next generation in email delivery infrastructure.

"ColdSpark's SparkEngine is technically superior to any other MTA software or appliance product available today," said Kelly Wanser, CEO of ColdSpark. "In head-to-head evaluations against available alternatives, the world's largest corporations choose ColdSpark's solutions because of their high performance, advanced features, ease of use and 6-month payback period on investment."

A New Approach to Email Challenges

Corporations continue to feel tremendous pain from rising mail volumes, growing security threats, the real-time expectations of users and the expanding complexity of managing mail networks. ColdSpark has been able to take a leadership role by providing a superior product, at the right time, to resolve the issues causing this pain.

"The issues of spam and security, coupled with increasing traffic and the growing importance of email in routine business activities, are driving organizations to upgrade their email infrastructure. Organizations are realizing that in addition to dealing with spam and viruses, they also need to deal with mail routing, policy management, quality of service and authentication," said Scott Brown, CTO of ColdSpark. "This implies a new kind of solution for mail networks, one that can transport and filter messages at much faster speeds than today's MTAs and appliances, and also readily integrate with existing and future systems for security, policy, retention, CRM and other functions -- with the SparkEngine, ColdSpark provides it."

Beyond MTAs and Appliances

Unlike appliance vendors, who bundle traditional MTA applications with customized operating system and hardware, ColdSpark's SparkEngine represents a wholly new type of software for mail transport -- a fully cross-platform, RFC compliant, high-performance MTA (delivering 2-4 million messages per hour on a standard Dual P4 server) that is also extensible, via its API architecture, as an Email Application Server(TM). This architecture allows business logic and content processing components to be flexibly added and managed through a secure, stable, high-performance message routing and management layer, mirroring the role of the web application server in http systems.

Network operators now have at their disposal a foundation for building highly scalable, cost-effective mail systems that can leverage any preferred 3rd party applications or in-house systems.

The SparkEngine addresses all of the failings of current outmoded email infrastructure and contains numerous advanced mail delivery features, such as Virtual Server technology, Self-Healing Mail Resource Management(TM), Domain Based Flow Control(TM), Zero-Bounce Socket Layer(TM), advanced clustering and Email Private Network (ePN(TM)). A single SparkEngine server installation replaces 12 or more traditional UNIX servers and typically reduces the TCO of the mail gateway by 75%.

Securing the Edge

ColdSpark is a thought leader in email network security, identifying the emerging shift in emphasis from message content analysis to mail traffic, sender authentication and secure transport at the network perimeter. ColdSpark's SparkEngine supports all of today's major perimeter security and authentication protocols (SPF, TLS, S/MIME etc.) and, through its unique API architecture, provides the flexibility to support future protocols, including not-yet-finalized initiatives such as Identified Internet Mail, Domain Keys and Caller ID. Coupled with this capability, the SparkEngine offers the industry's most comprehensive set of security features including native blacklisting and white listing, SMTP authentication, server-to-server email private network (ePN), message encryption and DoS protection.

ColdSpark's Innovative Products

ColdSpark offers the patent-pending SparkEngine, which transforms the performance, security and TCO of mail network operations, as the foundation of a suite of modular applications for message delivery, management, security and automation. These include the MailSpark Policy Management System(TM), MailSpark Transactional Mail System(TM), MailBlast Email Publishing System(TM) and MailBurst for Microsoft Outlook(TM).

About ColdSpark

ColdSpark is dedicated to transforming email delivery infrastructure for networks. ColdSpark has created the next generation of email delivery with the patent-pending SparkEngine (http://www.sparkengine.net), today's most powerful email delivery server, and a suite of sophisticated email security, policy management and marketing automation applications to offer enterprises and services providers the most flexible, secure and usable email solutions available. Founded in 2000 by email technology veterans, ColdSpark's customers include Lehman Brothers, AT&T, Equifax, Comcast Cable and Media News Group. For more information on ColdSpark's products and services, visit: http://www.coldspark.com.