Yipes Cuts Network Costs for Caspian Group; Yipes' Gigabit Optical Networks Provide Faster, More Reliable Internet Service for IT Outsourcing Firm.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 20, 2002

Yipes Communications, Inc., the defining provider of instantly scalable Ethernet services, today announced that its gigabit optical networks are providing faster, more reliable Internet service to San Francisco-based Caspian Group, Inc. while undercutting the cost of legacy T-1 solutions.

Caspian Group provides extensive IT management services and applications development to clients in the healthcare industry. One of its biggest customers is Delta Dental Plan of California, for which Caspian Group manages LAN and WAN networks, desktop computers and servers, storage networks and development of new business software applications for non-mainframe platforms.

Caspian Group makes extensive use of the Internet to support client sites, handle remote terminal sessions, communicate with traveling executives and consultants through Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and test software applications.

"When we outgrew our T-1 line with a national ISP, we looked for a new service provider to provide higher bandwidth, lower prices and above all, better customer service," said Brad Morrison, Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Caspian Group. "After looking closely at all the major carriers serving the Bay Area, we chose Yipes."

"Yipes' end-to-end Ethernet service is so much easier to manager and to scale incrementally," Morrison explained. "If I need more bandwidth for a specific event, I can get it in seconds, not months. We can even get guaranteed bandwidth with quality of service as we move to implement voice-over-IP applications. We knew that Yipes' network would be much more flexible in meeting our long-term needs."

As the IT services firm expands its software development business, times will arise when it needs to upload hundreds of megabytes of code over the Internet into customer servers in a single evening. "That's the sort of application we can handle with Yipes, but couldn't with standard fixed-bandwidth services," he said.

Morrison determined that the total cost of ownership for Yipes' fully managed service is much lower than for legacy T-1 services. Yipes provides Caspian Group with 5 Megabits per second of bandwidth for about the same price other carriers charge for 3 Mbps (two T-1 lines), he said. To connect to Yipes, he just plugged an Ethernet card into his Cisco router at a cost of a few hundred dollars. To support several T-1 lines would have required purchasing and installing CSU/DSUs, an inverse multiplexer and a new router at a cost of as much as $50,000.

"Once we ran all the numbers, Yipes was clearly the right decision," Morrison said.

Last but not least, service problems and billing disputes are becoming distant memories since Caspian Group switched to Yipes. "We have been using Yipes for more than six months without any outages," Morrison said. "I never hear of any complaints from my staff. That kind of peace of mind is hard to beat."

Yipes is the defining provider of instantly scalable Ethernet services, ranging from 1 Megabit per second to 1 Gigabit per second in 1 Mbps increments. Yipes' highly affordable services, available in 21 markets coast-to-coast, include Yipes MAN (Metro Area Networking), Yipes NAN (National Area Networking) and Yipes NET (high-speed Internet access). The company's customers include Fortune 1000 enterprises, financial institutions, real estate companies, law firms, medical facilities, Web-based businesses, ISPs and ASPs, universities, school districts and government agencies. Yipes has received $291 million in equity funding from more than 30 investors including Norwest Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), The Sprout Group/CSFB, Focus Ventures, JP Morgan Partners, BancBoston Ventures, Soros Private Equity Partners, Focus Capital and Intel Capital.

Yipes has won honors for innovation and excellence from America's Network, CED, Computerworld, CRN, Enterprise Systems, Inter@ctive Week, The Net Economy, Network Magazine, Network World, Red Herring, tele.com, Telephony and Upside, and awards from COMNET, NetWorld + Interop, Supercomm. Yipes also won the World Communication Award for Best New Carrier. The company is based in San Francisco. For more information, visit www.yipes.com.