Critical Path Noted for Delivering Lowest Total Cost of Ownership for Large Service Providers.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 18, 2001

Critical Path Messaging Server Significantly Outperforms

Competition in Radicati Group's Study

Critical Path, Inc. (Nasdaq:CPTH), a global leader in integrated communication solutions, today announced that a Radicati Group report has recognized Critical Path for providing a messaging system that offers the lowest ongoing total cost of ownership (TCO) for large service providers. The study highlighted Critical Path's low administration, integration and customization costs, while offering superior reliability by avoiding downtime to a greater degree than any other offering covered. Critical Path was the only vendor in the study supported by production customer sites of greater than one million subscribers. Additional vendors participating in the study included Mirapoint, Microsoft and iPlanet.

The study queried Global 1000 corporations and service providers to analyze and compare the messaging TCO, specified by the operational cost of running each system over a three-year period. In the study, researchers measured the following quantifiable expenses, including acquisition, maintenance, physical space, system integration and customization, installation and configuration, administration, and training costs for each system. The final results were obtained by averaging the total costs over the past three years. Critical Path's results reflect a subscriber base of more than 3.7 million users, nearly ten times the installed base of the next closest competitor. Large service providers require both a carrier grade, redundant hardware infrastructure and messaging software that performs at scale in order to properly meet the demands of their subscribers while planning for future services.

"Taking the very different sizes of subscriber populations analyzed in our study, Critical Path has by far the lowest TCO for large service providers with a three-year cost of only $0.79 per subscriber," said Sara Radicati, president and CEO of Radicati Group. "This is a spectacularly good value for service providers, given the much larger size of the typical Critical Path installation of more than 3.7 million subscribers."

The CP(TM) Messaging Server is an anchor component of the Critical Path(TM) Communication Platform. The Critical Path Communication Platform offers the broadest range of integrated communication solutions in the industry, supported by a common platform infrastructure. Global service providers and carriers, corporations and government agencies can deploy an extensible array of services spanning basic email, personal information management solutions, secure delivery, real-time and multi-media messaging and unified communications. Integrated identity management services provide common user profile and security management across both Critical Path solutions and external applications. The Critical Path solutions enable companies to minimize costs, reduce time to market, increase revenues and lay a solid foundation for next-generation services.

"Email is a foundational component for many other Critical Path communication solutions including our collaborative suite, secure delivery services, multi-media messaging and unified communications," said Sue Barsamian, senior vice president of marketing at Critical Path. "The lowest TCO provided by our messaging server will continue to benefit our customers as they deploy other next-generation services."

About Critical Path, Inc.

Critical Path, Inc. (Nasdaq:CPTH) is a global leader in communication technology and complete messaging solutions for wireless and wireline carriers, service providers and corporations through its integrated platform of messaging applications and directory infrastructure. Critical Path is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices throughout North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America. More information on Critical Path can be found at http://www.cp.net./.

Forward-Looking Statements 

This press release contains forward-looking statements by the Company and others regarding expected future business, financial and product performance, including our customers' and independent analysts' testimonials and the Company's statements and opinions regarding endorsements of our product and services offerings by our customers, our belief as to the ability of our products to ensure cost savings, performance, security, scalability and reliability and the market for outsourced services like ours. The words "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 objectives, the ability of our technology and our competitors' technologies to address customer demands, changes in economic and market conditions, 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, 2000, as amended, and the Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q for the quarters ended September 30, 2001 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. All other trademarks are the property of their holders.