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Pitney Bowes Selects Virtela Communications for Managed Pan Asian Enterprise Network

Posted on: Wednesday, 9 June 2004, 06:00 CDT

DENVER, June 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Virtela Communications Inc., a global network solutions company, today announced that Pitney Bowes , a global provider of integrated mail and document management solutions, is using Virtela's managed private networking services to connect branch offices throughout the Asia Pacific region. The fully managed network will span cities throughout Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Thailand, and substantially improve employee communication and productivity at a much lower expense than Frame Relay alternatives.

Branch office employees in the region previously did not have access to corporate resources or had limited access through unmanaged dial-up connections. With Virtela's managed IP Virtual Private Network (VPN), these employees have always-on access to centralized enterprise applications such as SAP, Siebel and Lotus Notes, as if they were working at the company's Stamford, Conn. headquarters. The Virtela managed network also enables Pitney Bowes to extend their extensive online training programs via the corporate intranet. Asia-Pac employees can now use those programs to more efficiently learn the company's billing and inventory systems, for example, to provide better service for customers of the company's innovative integrated mail and document management solutions.

"We evaluated all the major global service providers and Virtela met our exhaustive requirements," said Mike Reynolds, manager of data networks for Pitney Bowes. "Virtela uniquely gives us a single face for all network implementation and management across our Asia-Pacific countries, with a flexible broadband network solution that delivers greater reach, performance and savings than cost-prohibitive Frame Relay networks."

In addition, Virtela provides one stop shopping for implementation and management of local network access via relationships with more than 200 access providers worldwide. For Pitney Bowes, Virtela provides a single point of contact for management of more than 10 access providers, determining the best access method available for each location. A dedicated project manager handles the process from beginning to end -- from provisioning and monitoring to integrated billing and support. Virtela's extensive relationships and expertise resulted in bringing up the first branch office in Seoul, Korea within 30 business days, far exceeding the customer's requirements. Pitney Bowes also leveraged Virtela's business network consulting services to provide local LAN installation at the Seoul site.

"Virtela is pleased to provide a customized international network solution that complements Pitney Bowes vision for engineering and managing communications processes within an organization," said Vab Goel, Virtela's chairman and partner at Norwest Venture Partners. "By selecting our integrated consult-build-manage approach, Pitney Bowes employees can now more easily communicate between Asia-Pac and corporate headquarters without negatively impacting IT resources. Virtela's proven expertise at quickly incorporating new sites anywhere in the world is also at the ready to assist Pitney Bowes as it moves forward with its acquisition strategy in the mail and documents industry."

Virtela provides seamless 24x7 support through its dual Network Operations Centers in Denver and Mumbai, India. Mumbai, Virtela's Eastern Hemisphere command and control center, mirrors Virtela's Denver headquarters NOC and provides 'follow-the-sun' support for global customers, as well as local expertise for Asian-based customers. Both Virtela NOCs are designed with the same attention to systems high performance and availability by incorporating multiple source fiber optics access, triple power supply redundancy, and fully redundant operations systems.

Virtela insulates customers from risks associated with single network solutions by providing built in redundancy via a unique multi-carrier approach. Virtela's IP Service Fabric (IPSF(SM)) network infrastructure exploits proprietary algorithms that intelligently route customer traffic via the best-performing path over multiple Tier-1 backbones, providing the highest availability private IP network.

Virtela VPN is the foundation on which Virtela delivers its comprehensive suite of network, security and application solutions. Key to its service- oriented and consultative approach, Virtela augments its core offerings with value-added capabilities such as network architecture and security policy consulting, design and implementation, including provisioning and on-site installation. Ongoing, Virtela delivers 24x7 proactive monitoring, management and support, customer control via web portal, a single point of contact, a single integrated bill, 4-hour hardware replacement worldwide and stringent service level agreements, including outage notification within 15 minutes.

About Pitney Bowes

Pitney Bowes is the world's leading provider of integrated mail and document management systems, services and solutions. The $4.6 billion company helps organizations of all sizes engineer the flow of communication to reduce costs, increase effectiveness and enhance customer relationships. The company's 80-plus years of technological leadership has produced many major innovations in the mailing industry and more than 3,500 active patents with applications in a variety of markets, including printing, shipping, encryption, and financial services. With approximately 33,000 employees worldwide, Pitney Bowes serves more than 2 million businesses through direct and dealer operations.

About Virtela

Virtela Communications Inc. delivers award-winning network and security solutions to many of the world's largest and fastest-growing multinational companies. Currently serving customers across six continents, Virtela's network reach spans more than 190 countries. Virtela's unique Internet Protocol Service Fabric (IPSF(SM)) offers the foundation for delivering critical applications via the company's acclaimed service methodology, with a services suite that includes IP-based virtual private networks (VPNs), security services, Voice over IP, Video over IP, and network consulting services.

Virtela is headquartered in Denver, Colorado, with a second Network Operations Center in Mumbai, India. Virtela is a privately held company funded by investors including Norwest Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Palomar Ventures, Symantec Corp., and Juniper Networks . For more information, please call (720) 475-4000 or visit http://www.virtela.net/.

Virtela Communications Inc.

CONTACT: Jane Morrissey of Virtela Communications Inc., +1-720-475-4012,jmorrissey@virtela.net

Web site: http://www.virtela.net/

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