Innosoft Offers Special PMDF Pricing To Help K-12 Educators and Students Access the Internet.

WEST COVINA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 20, 1996--Innosoft International Inc. today unveiled a new educational licensing program that will make it less costly for budget-strapped elementary and secondary schools throughout the United States to easily send e-mail over the Internet using the power of PMDF e-Mail Interconnect.

Under the terms of the PMDF K-12 Pricing Program, any K-12 school or school system who licenses PMDF e-Mail Interconnect before September 30, 1996, will be able to license PMDF-MTA or any of its support modules Q PMDF-FAX, PMDF-LAN, PMDF-X400, PMDF-X500, PMDF-MR, PMDF-ACCESS, and PMDF-MB400 Q at a special discount of 60 percent off normal commercial licensing fees.

"Even in the best financial climate, our public schools need help staying current with new technologies," noted Clyde Johnston, President of Innosoft. "In recent years, educators have come to recognize the Internet as an important source of information; a means to gather data about a variety of topics and exchange ideas with other students around the world.

"Unfortunately, school systems have been slow to extend Internet access to their students, largely because of a lack of resources. With this special pricing program, we hope to make it easier for school systems to extend Internet access to the classroom using PMDF. PMDF uses Internet standards to extend e-mail integration to virtually any messaging platform, and it is robust enough to support messaging for an entire school system."

PMDF e-Mail Interconnect is an "Internet style" e-mail integration solution. In May of 1992, PMDF was enhanced and shipped as the first commercial software product to support the then new MIME, Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions standard (RFC 1521 and 1522). By using Internet MIME architecture pioneered by Innosoft's developers as its native format, PMDF brings complete multipart/multimedia messaging - including binary attachments - to users throughout the enterprise.

PMDF for OpenVMS and Digital UNIX includes PMDF-MTA which functions as the backbone "e-mail integration engine"; PMDF-LAN integrates all major PC LAN mail systems, including cc:Mail and Microsoft Mail. PMDF-ACCESS provides for low cost extension of PMDF's client functionality and mail integration services to additional machines, supporting users on both OpenVMS and Digital UNIX systems.

Additional PMDF modules are available for integration of X.400-based messaging systems and Digital's Message Router products such as ALL-IN-1, plus capabilities for e-mail-to-FAX and centralized directory services.

What Educators Say About PMDF

Many of Innosoft's current K-12 customers have already discovered the benefits of PMDF's Internet-style approach to e-mail integration. According to Joe Lane, the e-mail administrator for the Washington D.C. Public Schools and a new Innosoft user, he is looking to PMDF to provide the means to centralize e-mail administration and extend his current ALL-IN-1 e-mail infrastructure from administration to the classroom. "Some of our schools' students already have accounts and they are exchanging mail with students all over the planet," said Lane. "We are trying to centralize administration. What PMDF brings is the ability to seamlessly tweak the e-mail system behind the scenes so no one has to worry about what's going on but us, and so we can move things around pretty quickly."

"We are planning to set up a direct connection to the Internet and over the next few years e-mail will be more geared toward student use so they can have key pals and work on special projects," said Vince Humes, Technical Specialist for the Millcreek Township School District in Erie, Pennsylvania. "We hope the students will be able to work with anybody anywhere."

Humes uses PMDF as his mail hub to link together approximately 400 VMS Mail users and 100 Apple Powershare users. The school district is currently in the process of setting up its own Internet domain, and Humes sees PMDF as being an important part of the infrastructure: "The great thing about PMDF is that you install it and it runs. That's how I can tell if it's a good product, if I can forget about it."

George Sheehy of Phoenix Systems is responsible for maintaining the e-mail infrastructure for the Westport Public Schools in Westport, Connecticut. He says, "The original reason they went with PMDF was because the town of Westport uses cc:Mail and they wanted a more robust mail system. PMDF provided the necessary integration to get everything working together, and it's been working just fine."

Sheehy adds that the MIME support in PMDF has proven to be a real advantage for school administrators as well: "The business manager creates a lot of Lotus spreadsheets, but the principals are using Macintoshes so when he sends a spreadsheet it has to be converted to Excel so it can be read on the Mac. PMDF provides the bulk of the support for that with its document conversion feature."

Under normal commercial pricing, software licensing fees for a typical installation will range from $8,000 to $15,000 or more, depending upon the level of PMDF functionality selected for implementation by the customer.

About Innosoft International

Innosoft's electronic mail products are marketed directly to end users by Innosoft in North America, and are available throughout Europe, New Zealand, Australia, and Japan through a network of international distributors. PMDF products are presently installed at more than 2,000 sites in 46 countries throughout the world. The company is located at 1050 East Garvey Avenue South, West Covina, CA 91790; telephone [phone]; FAX [phone].

CONTACT: Woolf Media Relations, Inc.

Tom Woolf, 415/508-1554

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