Endeavos Technology's New IM Solution Promises To Transform Public IM Products Into Fully Interoperable Systems With Security Compliance, User Authentication and Audit Capabilities.

Business Editors & High-Tech Writers

Irvine, Calif. & Cambridge, U.K.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 24, 2002

Magi Secure IM Presents Unique Opportunity for Enterprises to Seize

Full Control Over Multiple Public IM Environments Such as AOL(R)

Instant Messenger(TM) and MSN(R) Messenger Without Disrupting the

Instant Messaging Experience and Existing Network Architectures

Endeavors Technology today announced Magi Secure IM for AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and Microsoft's MSN Messenger as the first in a suite of instant messaging products scheduled for release by the secure Web software vendor to bring about full interoperability and corporate governance compliance of popular instant messaging (IM) products.

Magi Secure IM is innovative technology and a business tool that singularly routes popular instant messaging products through a fully compliant and auditable cross-enterprise communications proxy. Its deployment will ease corporate concerns of lock-in to any one proprietary IM product, and provides a unique verification mechanism for enterprise IM communications.

The release of Magi Secure IM is timely. According to David Smith, vice president and research director for Gartner: "The rapid proliferation of IM use has resulted in individuals employing a vital communication medium without forethought. E-mail followed a similar implementation pattern. It took more than 10 years before enterprises recognized and effectively addressed problems of security, reliability and business policy. Enterprises must pay proper attention to IM usage now, lest they repeat the painful lessons taught by e-mail."

Magi Secure IM will work with independent IM clients in their unchanged native mode allowing enterprises, for the first time, to gain full control over employee messaging and chat sessions, whatever the IM environment.

Magi Secure IM is a plug-in product and is transparent to the user. It supports the features and functionality of commercial IM products so there's no training, infrastructure change or switching costs involved in getting IM fully and finally back under corporate IT control. Magi Secure IM also improves large file getting and sending, and incorporates smart local-loop routing so that inside communications travel point-to-point internally.

A principal feature of Magi Secure IM is its unique ability to look up corporate identities from popular IM buddy names and underwrite them with strong Public Key Infrastructure based authentications to avoid identity spoofing, and allow financial grade non-repudiation, tracking and auditing.

Endeavors Technology's unique approach of leaving the IM platform untouched to preserve the user experience, yet providing corporations with strong control mechanisms over instant messaging and chat rooms, supports the extended adoption of secure IM in businesses without further delay, and without lengthy lead times and high costs inherent in modifying network architectures.

Enterprise IM Poised To Quadruple by 2004

Instant Messaging is no longer a consumer phenomenon, and Endeavors Technology has addressed the social, legal and technical issues surrounding non-secure instant messaging with its Magi Secure IM product.

With over 40 million enterprise IM users, which research firm IDC expects to more than quadruple by 2004, IM remained, until today, a solution with a problem ... rising fears over unmanaged use of IM within and beyond the corporate wall, forcing enterprises to choose between inside-the-firewall, self-managed solutions with little or no external interaction, or an outside-the-firewall approach with little or no security, trust or control.

"Like enterprise e-mail adoption from 1985-1995, or Web server adoption from 1991-1997, enterprise instant messaging is at a point in its adoption cycle where organizations can only see business value if all IM systems are interoperable and can be deployed securely within and beyond the corporate wall," said Bernard Hulme, chairman and CEO of Endeavors Technology. "With Magi Secure IM, Endeavors Technology can secure major public IM services and deliver the definitive audit control mechanisms to the guardians of corporate knowledge and business communications."

Interoperability, Interoperability, Interoperability

The call for interoperability of popular IM products is growing across vertical industries. FIMA, the Financial Services Instant Messaging Association created recently by seven leading Wall Street banks is one example. Earlier this week, Endeavors announced its involvement with FIMA as a founding technology vendor to support the association's goals to bring about the interoperability of IM platforms across the financial services industry.

Commenting on the release of Endeavors new interoperable-enabling secure IM solution, FIMA's Will Meldrom stated: "Initiatives that bring about the interoperability of IM systems are welcome news to the financial services community. The launch of Magi Secure IM promises to be a step forward in this direction."

Other calls include the oil industry. "The spot oil trading market has seen startling growth in the use of IM in the last 2 years, but now risks becoming a hostage to fortune if any one system dominates," said Philip Pollock, managing director of Aspen Oil Broking. "The interoperability between popular IM systems achieved through Endeavors Technology's cross-platform Magi Secure IM solution will eliminate those concerns at-a-stroke, and gives the added bonus of client and transactional confidentiality, and archive retrieval."

A Q&A on the Magi Secure IM technology can be obtained by calling Endeavors Technology at 949/833-2800, or by e-mail [e-mail].

About Endeavors Technology Inc.

Endeavors Technology Inc. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of mobile computing and network infrastructure vendor Tadpole Technology plc (LSE:TAD)(www.tadpole.com), which has plants and offices in Irvine and Carlsbad (Calif.), and Cambridge, Edinburgh and Bristol (U.K.). For further information on Endeavors' P2P solutions, call 949/833-2800, e-mail to [e-mail], or visit the company's Web site http://www.endeavors.com.

Copyright Endeavors Technology Inc. Magi, Magi Secure IM and Magi Enterprise are registered trademarks of Endeavors Technology. All other products and services mentioned in this document are trademarks of their respective companies.

Note for Editors

Endeavors Technology is the developer and vendor of Magi technology, an award-winning universal-access document collaboration system that transforms today's Web into a highly secure inter- and intra-enterprise collaboration network of files and Web resources. With Endeavors' core Magi Enterprise product, enterprises can implement ad-hoc Virtual Private Networks for collaboration very rapidly and affordably without disrupting existing applications, networks or work practices. Magi does this by effectively transforming unsecured, "read-only" Web networks into two-way trusted and transparent collaboration environments, through the use of such features as cross-firewall connections, advanced data extraction, an intuitive graphical interface and universal name spaces generating "follow me URLs" for mobile professionals.