Stride Rite Extends Outsourcing Partnership with Equant; Messaging Protection Service Cuts Spam by 70 Percent.

PARIS & LEXINGTON, Mass. -- Equant has expanded its two-year relationship with The Stride Rite Corporation, a designer and marketer of leading brands of high-quality footwear for children and adults. To further increase efficiencies, Stride Rite decided to outsource to Equant key IT functions, including network security, email filtering and wide area network management services. Stride Rite is also running voice, video and data over the Equant MPLS-based IP VPN in order to enhance collaboration between its facilities in North America and China.

Stride Rite is securing its network using the Equant Secure Gateway, a managed firewall service, and Equant Messaging Protection Suite (EMPS), a comprehensive perimeter-based messaging protection system that includes virus protection, content filtering, disaster recovery and spam filtering. Since December 2004, Stride Rite has cut unsolicited e-mail by 70 percent using EMPS and has boosted messaging reliability, while reducing network load.

The Equant Application Performance Assessment tool, combined with guidance by Equant solutions consultants, helps Stride Rite manage its network and the traffic that traverses it, eliminating bottlenecks by supervising the amount of bandwidth being used by different applications at any given time. As a result, Stride Rite now has greater visibility and control of their IP VPN. For example, if mission-critical applications require additional capacity, Stride Rite can divert bandwidth to these systems to ensure optimal performance.

Equant's Video over IP for IP VPN service facilitates real-time communication between facilities in China and North America, enabling Stride Rite to efficiently and cost-effectively collaborate on product development and design. "Equant's capabilities in China were another driver behind our decision to choose Equant as our global communications solutions provider," said Peter Charles, senior vice president of Stride Rite Sourcing. "We knew that Equant could deliver the reliability and performance that we require to optimize our business operations in China." Equant offers fully managed domestic and international services based on a private, resilient network infrastructure in 19 mainland China cities.

"Equant's breadth of knowledge has allowed us to consolidate the number of vendors we use and streamline our internal IT functions, so we could focus on our core business operations," said Yusef Akyuz, CIO of Stride Rite. "By leveraging Equant's technology solutions and relevant communications expertise, Stride Rite has become a more efficient and collaborative organization, which has given us a distinct competitive advantage, and allowed us to better serve our customers."

"Our work with Stride Rite is an excellent example of a successful outsourcing partnership," said Mack Treece, President of the Americas for Equant. "Equant's solutions and consulting capabilities in areas such as security and collaboration are helping retailers like Stride Rite enhance productivity and hasten the time to market of their products."

Stride Rite, which began working with Equant in 2003, currently connects five sites in North America and China to the Equant network. The company will add three more North American sites to their network before the second half of 2005.

About The Stride Rite Corporation

The Stride Rite Corporation (NYSE: SRR) markets the leading brand of high quality children's shoes in the United States. Other footwear products for children and adults are marketed by the company under well-known brand names, including Keds(R), Sperry(R), Tommy Hilfiger(R), Grasshoppers(R), and Munchkin(R). Information about the company is available on our Web site - www.strideritecorp.com. Information about the company's brands and product lines is available at www.striderite.com, www.keds.com, and www.sperrytopsider.com.

About Equant

Equant is a recognized industry leader in global communications services for multinational businesses. Equant combines its network expertise with its expanded services capabilities to provide global, integrated and customized communication services to enable its customers' key business processes. Equant serves thousands of the world's top companies, with the industry's most extensive portfolio of communications services and network solutions, including the market-leading IP VPN used by nearly 1,300 global businesses. Equant, a subsidiary of France Telecom, consistently leads industry surveys in corporate user satisfaction.