Critical Path to Buy FaxNet

Critical Path Inc. Wednesday
made a move to expand beyond its flagship e-mail services with the purchase of FaxNet, a supplier of outsourced fax and messaging solutions.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Critical Path (CPTH)
, a leading provider of
business-to-business Internet messaging solutions for corporations and
ISPs, expects the acquisition to broaden its
spectrum of messaging solutions.

“FaxNet is joining Critical Path at the forefront of the rapidly developing
Internet messaging revolution,” said Keith Cooper president and chief
executive officer of
FaxNet.

“By combining the respective strengths of both company’s, Critical
Path significantly enhances its ability to meet the growing demands
of its diverse customer base and to offer the most comprehensive Internet
messaging solutions available today.”

To shoulder the growing demands of its broad customer base, Critical Path
is developing a full spectrum of
Internet messaging solutions to complement its core e-mail systems. FaxNet
should prove to be highly valuable for the company because it released host
of e-commerce solutions, dubbed “Fax Ramp.”

Fax Ramp’s features include:

• FaxMission Enterprise Onramp, a service that allows large-scale
  businesses to send faxes via FaxNet’s onramp with no investment in hardware
  or software
• FaxMission E-mail-to-Fax, a service that enables end-users to send fax
  documents from any e-mail address
• FaxMission Web Fax, designed to allow service providers, portals, and
  Internet content providers with the ability to implement Web-hosted fax
  services, Web Fax sends documents via a designated Web page

According to International Data Corp., the Internet fax market was approximately $50
million in 1998 and is expected to grow to $2 billion by 2002. Moreover,
analysts estimate the unified messaging market will grow to $2.3
billion in 2002.