GTE taps Software.com in multi-million dollar licensing agreement to deliverdialtone quality Internet e-mail services to GTE Internet Solutions customers.Rapidly-growing Internet access service to benefit

IRVING, Texas -- GTE and Software.com today announced a multi-year, multi-million dollar licensing agreement that will provide consumer and small business customers of GTE's Internet access service (currently marketed as GTE Internet Solutions) with the industry's highest quality e-mail services.

Under the agreement, GTE has licensed Software.com's carrier-class, native Internet messaging server, InterMail, as the core e-mail server for GTE's Internet access service. Designed to meet the rigid requirements of the world's largest Internet Service Providers (ISPs), InterMail is the only messaging software in its class that delivers true "dial-tone quality" e-mail services -- e-mail as reliable as the dialtone you hear when you pick up the telephone.

Earlier this year, GTE became the first local exchange carrier to reach 100,000 Internet customers, and today serves more than 160,000 customers in all 50 states. "The investment in Software.com's InterMail technology came after GTE realized their tremendous growth demanded a reliable, highly scalable e-mail system," commented John MacFarlane, chief executive officer of Software.com. "The selection of InterMail enhances GTE's plans to provide its customers with very reliable, scalable e-mail service, as well as to aggressively increase its subscriber base."

"Internet e-mail continues to be the most popular application among GTE Internet customers, making the selection of InterMail critical to our aggressive growth plans, and commitment to customer satisfaction," said Alex Coleman, vice president/general manager of online services for GTE. "Software.com's InterMail offers GTE the technology to ensure that our customers will receive e-mail service that's as reliable as the dial-tone they hear when making a phone call. This is exactly the kind of reliability and quality of service that our customers demand. While other providers only talk about investing in high quality infrastructure, GTE is making the investments."

"Software.com developed InterMail specifically to satisfy the demands of large and growing service providers like GTE, and we're proud to be teaming with them in this effort," commented MacFarlane of Software.com. "We strive continuously to push the envelope of scalability and one hundred percent availability, while delivering the features that service providers require to attract and maintain customers. GTE's commitment to providing leading-edge Internet access services is evidenced by their investment in a messaging infrastructure that will serve them as they grow their consumer and business Internet services."

"In such a competitive market, major consumer Internet services cannot afford any sizable e-mail outage because customers will seek another provider offering higher quality of service. This agreement between GTE and Software.com represents a serious deployment of solid network infrastructure at GTE on which consumers and businesses can rely," commented Christopher Landes, a consultant at TeleChoice, Inc. of Verona, N.J. "In addition, this agreement demonstrates Software.com's clear advantage at providing high-end messaging servers to ISPs who care about quality of service. There is no other vendor who can say that they deliver what Software.com can in InterMail -- 'dial-tone messaging'. This agreement is another sign of the momentum that Software.com has gained in leading the service provider market for carrier-class messaging services.

InterMail: Carrier-Class Messaging

Built specifically for larger regional, national and international ISPs, InterMail offers dial-tone caliber messaging service -- service that's designed to support the ISP customers interest in a fully-reliable, simple-to-use e-mail service. In addition to having to manage phenomenal subscriber growth, these ISPs have the corresponding challenge of supporting the growing (often exponentially) number of messages being sent and received over e-mail. InterMail provides the powerful features required to satisfy even the largest of service providers:

• Advanced Scalability. Through a multi-threaded, distributed server architecture, InterMail is able to smooth system growth and alleviate bottlenecks, thereby providing advanced system scalability.

• High Availability Through Server Redundancy. InterMails server configuration can offer redundant operation to ensure that the failure of one server will not result in performance degradation or impact on operation of the messaging service.

• Reliability Through Fault Resilience. InterMail includes message journaling, transactions and recovery mechanisms to ensure no message data is ever lost.

• Centralized System Management & Monitoring. InterMail's system management environment is specialized to meet the demands of ISPs who need to administer large user communities, providing such benefits as Help Desk access points and continuous server monitoring thus allowing predictable system growth.

About GTE

With revenues of more than $21 billion in 1996, GTE is one of the largest publicly held telecommunications companies in the world. In the United States, GTE offers local and wireless service in 29 states and long-distance service in all 50 states. GTE was the first among its peers to offer "one-stop shopping" for local, long-distance and Internet access services. Outside the United States, where GTE has operated for more than 40 years, the company serves approximately 7 million customers. GTE is also a leader in government and defense communications systems and equipment, directories and telecommunications-based information services, and aircraft-passenger telecommunications. Additional information about GTE can be found on the Internet at http://www.gte.com.

About Software.com

Software.com, Inc. is an Internet software company whose mission is to provide scalable, carrier-class network infrastructure solutions to service providers worldwide. The company has two industry-leading products -- InterMail and Post.Office -- which provide server- based, native Internet messaging solutions to customers ranging from small businesses to large organizations with millions of users. Software.com customers include, among others, AST Research, AT&T; WorldNet^SM Service, BBN Corp., Bell Atlantic, BSDI, Erol's Internet, Frontier Technologies, GE Information Services, Netscape, NetManage, Siemens Nixdorf Information Systems, Stratus Computer, and Banyan Systems. The company's headquarters are dual-located in Santa Barbara, Calif. and Lexington, Mass., with other offices in major countries around the world. Software.com can be reached in the U.S. at 805-882-2470 or
http://www.software.com.

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Post.Office and InterMail are trademarks and registered trademarks of Software.com, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks and service marks are the property of their respective owners.

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