Critical Path Launches Next-Generation Hosted Messaging Service.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 15, 2003

From HP Data Centers, Hosted Email Pioneer Offers

Carriers & Service Providers Industrial-Strength

Integrated Email Services 

Critical Path, Inc. (Nasdaq:CPTH), a global leader in digital communications software and services, today launched its next-generation hosted messaging service, jointly run with HP. The new service offers carriers, enterprises, and small and medium sized businesses advanced messaging applications with a quality of service that surpasses what organizations can do internally on their own - at a fraction of the cost. Critical Path also announced that T-Mobile, one of the world's leading mobile telephony providers, has chosen Critical Path's hosted messaging service to power its new T-Zones(SM) T-email service that will be marketed to millions of mobile phone subscribers (see separate news release).

By outsourcing email operations to Critical Path - which has more than 15 million users on its service - carriers will be able to rapidly offer targeted subscribers packages with an extensive range of new messaging applications and provide their customers with superior service levels, without the capital expenses or risks of deploying a massive messaging project in-house. Hosted in HP's global data centers, the new service is offered with industry-leading service levels.

Critical Path's service is aimed at wireless carriers, service providers or large portal companies who want to offer their customers bundled or a la carte messaging services; and the largely underserved SOHO 

and SME markets. The service also provides solutions to Fortune 2000 companies who want to upgrade, extend or replace legacy email systems, and offer email to underserved employee populations such as workers in factories or remote locations. It lets enterprises deliver a broader range of services to more employees, and with higher service levels and a predictable monthly cost below what internal IT organizations can deliver today.

"Increasingly, IT departments are turning to outsourcing and managed services so that they can gain control over their IT costs and focus resources on strategic initiatives - and for some, messaging may be one of the logical places to start," said Christopher Ambrose, a research analyst with Gartner. "Driven to improve efficiencies and services, some IT organizations are transforming themselves into internal service providers -- complete with SLAs, chargebacks and broad service offerings. Innovative enterprises will increasingly evaluate messaging outsourcing to provide diverse user populations with flexibility of service and speed of deployment."

A carrier-class, managed messaging solution, the service offers a suite of a la carte applications including email, calendaring, centralized personal address book, to-do lists, dynamic alerts, anti-spam & anti-virus protection, and a complete billing, provisioning and reporting system. Critical Path's standards-based messaging provides subscribers with access from mobile handsets, desktop clients and browser-based interfaces. Critical Path also provides access to subscribers who use Pocket-PC based mobile devices.

Widely acknowledged as the leader in hosted messaging services, Critical Path pioneered hosted messaging in 1997, offering basic mail for desktop and Web access with virus and anti-spam protection. The enhanced service launched today is built on Critical Path's latest Communications Platform, recognized as providing the industry's highest scalability and reliability - at the lowest total cost of ownership. It provides a comprehensive set of messaging solutions for carriers and service providers, supporting functionality that permits delegated administration, granular reporting, billing, and subscriber usage analysis.

"Carriers, ISPs and enterprises are looking for ways to keep IT costs down while offering the very latest messaging applications to their subscribers or employees," said Tracy Currie, executive vice president, general manager, hosted operations at Critical Path. "By outsourcing their messaging operations to Critical Path, they can deliver the highest quality, most reliable, cost-effective messaging service available - without the headache and costs of running their own messaging infrastructure."

"We are happy to join Critical Path in giving our customers access to this new messaging service to help them decrease costs, respond to changing messaging requirements, and provide a broad portfolio of messaging services to employees and customers," said Uli Holdenried, senior vice president, HP Services. "By combining the strengths of HP's data centers and Critical Path's messaging expertise, we can ensure customers receive the highest service levels for outsourced messaging."

Critical Path's complete hosted messaging solution enables a rapid time-to-market for carriers seeking to quickly generate new revenues. Supporting multiple classes of service gives customers the flexibility to target multiple markets via a single solution -- helping drive revenue and subscriber loyalty. Enterprises can also mix and match applications to suit specific groups of employees, sales representatives that need wireless access to contact information, or factory workers who just need basic email.

About Critical Path, Inc.

Critical Path, Inc. (Nasdaq: CPTH) is a global leader in digital communications software and services. The company provides messaging solutions -- from wireless, secure and unified messaging to basic email and personal information management -- as well as identity management solutions that simplify user profile management and strengthen information security. The standards-based Critical Path Communications Platform, built to perform reliably at the scale of public networks, delivers the industry's lowest total cost of ownership for messaging solutions and lays a solid foundation for next-generation communications services. Solutions are available on a hosted or licensed basis. Critical Path's customers include more than 700 enterprises, 190 carriers and service providers, eight national postal authorities and 35 government agencies. Critical Path is headquartered in San Francisco. More information can be found at www.criticalpath.net

Critical Path Forward-Looking Statements:

This press release contains forward-looking statements by the Company and its executives regarding our future strategic, operating and financial plans, anticipated or projected revenues, markets and strategies for sale of our products and services, plans related to global sales efforts, anticipated benefits of strategic relationships with partners, our ability to compete in the global marketplace, endorsements of our product and service offerings by our customers and partners, the performance, scalability, interoperability and other features and benefits of our product and service offerings, industry trends and changing market standards, market and customer requirements and the ability of our products and services to meet the business needs of our customers, ability of our customers to achieve operational efficiency and cost savings through deployment of products and services and the overall market for products and service offerings like ours. The words and expressions "look forward to," "will," "expect," "plan," "believe," "seek," "strive for," "anticipate," "estimate" and similar expressions are intended to identify the Company's forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. These risks include, but are not limited to, our evolving business strategy and the emerging and changing nature of the market for our products and services, our ability to deliver on our sales and strategic objectives, competitive technologies and our ability to attract and retain customers, the ability of our technology to address customer demands, changes in economic and market conditions, risks associated with continued compliance with national exchange listing requirements, risks associated with international operations, unplanned system interruptions and capacity constraints, software and service design defects. These and other risks and uncertainties are described in more detail in the Company's filings with the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission (www.sec.gov) made from time to time, including Critical Path's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2002, as may be amended from time to time.

Note to Editors: Critical Path and the Critical Path logo are the trademarks of Critical Path, Inc.