Enterprise Audit from Osterman Research Shows Immediate Payback With the FrontBridge Outsourced Spam Solution.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

MARINA DEL REY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 17, 2003

New Findings Quantify How a Managed Service Delivers

Cost Savings From Day One

FrontBridge Technologies Inc., a trusted provider of email protection and message management services, today released "How a Service Provider Can Eliminate Spam in the Enterprise," a white paper by Osterman Research.

The white paper reveals new data substantiating the cost savings enterprises can realize with an outsourced spam filtering solution. The data comes from Osterman's audits of enterprise IT environments and details the advantages and immediate ROI that managed solutions such as FrontBridge TrueProtect(TM) Message Management Suite deliver in comparison to in-house and premised-based alternatives. In addition to bandwidth, server and storage costs that can exceed $30 per user per year, some of the IT-related costs associated with on-premise or in-house spam filtering(1) include:

-- $15 per user/year for IT-related cost of maintaining spam

rules in-house

-- 8.7 hours/week in IT person time required to manage on-premise

spam filtering

-- 25 times/month, on average, that IT staff must modify and

manage spam filters

Rather than purchasing hardware and software that requires dedicated IT resources to operate, a growing list of enterprises have freed up IT resources and achieved significant cost savings by choosing to filter spam and viruses outside their networks with the FrontBridge TrueProtect solution.

A leading producer of wireless devices was inundated with spam before turning to FrontBridge: "We employ more than 3,000 people worldwide, and 40 percent of our email was spam. After deploying the FrontBridge service, we effectively blocked spam, thereby reducing incoming email by 40 percent. We saved $100,000 in direct costs by avoiding purchases of new server and storage capacity, and we reduced staffing requirements originally needed to control our spam and virus problem. In addition, we estimate that we saved $38 per employee, or an extra $125,000 annually, in recaptured employee productivity."

Customers that implement the FrontBridge solution can do so in less than one hour and immediately benefit from spam reduction without any of the costs associated with deploying on-premise solutions. "A spam-filtering service provider, such as FrontBridge, makes it easy to deploy and manage an anti-spam infrastructure," said Michael Osterman, president and founder of Osterman Research. "Because using such a service avoids the costs of installation, management, updating, patching and troubleshooting that are inherent in on-premise solutions, placing the sometimes complex and time-consuming details of rule-updating and email management in the hands of an outside expert like FrontBridge is a very good choice for many enterprises."

FrontBridge offers deployment and cost benefits that in-house and premised-based solutions cannot deliver, and it is the only vendor to provide service level guarantees. For example, FrontBridge's distributed network architecture enables the company to guarantee 99.999 percent service uptime, and its triple-layer spam filtering service effectively blocks up to 95 percent of spam with virtually zero false positives (less than .0004 percent).

Businesses can get a snapshot of the savings FrontBridge can provide by utilizing the FrontBridge ROI calculator. The calculator can be found at http://www.frontbridge.com/roi/. The full Osterman Research white paper can be downloaded at: http://www.frontbridge.com.

About FrontBridge Technologies

FrontBridge Technologies Inc., a leading provider of enterprise-class e-mail protection and message management services, is a privately held company led by a seasoned team of executives from the telecommunications, Internet, IT services and security industries. FrontBridge TrueProtect(TM) Message Management Suite protects corporations from spam, viruses, and malicious attacks with unmatched performance, availability and reliability. FrontBridge was formerly known as Big Fish Communications Inc. A venture-backed company now in its fourth year of operation, FrontBridge is headquartered in Marina del Rey, Calif. Visit us on the Web at www.frontbridge.com or call 877.301.8232.

About Osterman Research Inc.

Osterman Research Inc. provides market research, cost modeling, benchmarking and related services to vendors of technology-based products and services. Osterman helps these vendors to understand the needs of their current and prospective customers by providing them with relevant, accurate and timely information on markets and market trends. Based near Seattle, Osterman serves a diverse and growing base of clients in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. More information can be found on the Web at www.ostermanresearch.com.

(1)Based on a 1,000-person enterprise, and an average IT staff member salary of $70,000 per year.