First Hop Ltd and Stonesoft Corporation

First Hop's Escio Mobile Access products use Stonesoft's StoneBeat® Clustering Platform for high availability and clustering First Hop Ltd and Stonesoft Corporation announce technology partnership HELSINKI-May 09, 2001- The mobile infrastructure software company First Hop Ltd and Stonesoft Corporation (HEX: SFT1V), a leading innovator and provider of software-based, high availability network security solutions, announced today a technology partnership agreement. The companies will integrate Stonesoft's market-leading StoneBeat high availability clustering technology into First Hop's Escio Mobile Access gateway products to provide customers with high availability mobile infrastructure solutions that ensure fault tolerance and easy scalability. The first products already available as full-scale high availability versions using the StoneBeat Clustering platform are Escio Message Gateway (EMG) and Escio WAP Gateway (EWG). EMG is a high performance messaging solution that provides flexible and operator-independent routing of messages between mobile terminals and mobile services. EWG is a high availability WAP server designed to enable carrier-grade performance for WAP service customers. "Fault-tolerance and scalability are crucial features of mobile infrastructure products and their importance will further increase in the future. The technology partnership with Stonesoft enables us to combine our expertise in developing high-end mobile infrastructure with their market-leading high availability technology. The end products will meet the highest requirements of our customers", said Petteri Koponen, CEO, First Hop. "As a market leading provider of high availability and clustering technology, we are now extending that functionality from wired to wireless environments", said Esa Korvenmaa, CEO, Stonesoft Corporation. "The StoneBeat Clustering Platform is a flexible solution for any company that requires load balancing and fault tolerance features. This cooperation with First Hop is a perfect example of that." Escio Message Gateway and Escio WAP Gateway are part of First Hop's Escio Mobile Messaging product line, which contains fully interoperable infrastructure software products that facilitate the development of mobile services and enable access to Internet services via mobile devices. The products are designed to meet the needs of mobile operators, service providers, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Applications Service Providers (ASPs). About First Hop First Hop Ltd is a mobile infrastructure company specialising in carrier-grade software products. The company's core competence lies in developing high availability mobile platforms for mobile operators, service providers, ISPs and ASPs. Founded in 1997, First Hop is privately held and based in Espoo, Finland. For more information, please visit http://www.firsthop.com. About First Hop's Escio Mobile Access products First Hop's Escio Mobile Access product line contains high availability messaging platforms that satisfy the mission-critical needs of mobile operators, service providers, ISPs and ASPs. Escio Message Gateway (EMG) is used to create and manage high availability messaging services. EMG enables service providers to build services that use different mobile messaging protocols. Mobile operators and WASPs can use EMG to offer service providers an easy programming interface, and to manage the services under their brand. Escio WAP Gateway (EWG) is a high availability server designed to enable carrier-grade performance for WAP service customers. EWG is a robust, fault-tolerant and scalable WAP gateway, which is used to provide WAP access to mobile application services. The product provides straightforward and easy interfaces for integration with service applications, management systems and invoicing products. About Stonesoft Corporation Stonesoft Corporation (HEX: SFT1V) is a worldwide software company, with international headquarters in Helsinki, Finland and U.S. headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. Stonesoft is the provider of enterprise-level network security and high availability clustering technology for companies deploying business-critical network applications on Internet and mobile servers. Stonesoft's StoneGatetm is a firewall and VPN solution providing advanced security, dynamic load balancing and high availability. The StoneBeat® clustering product line provides the same functionality for third party firewalls, Web, content scanning, storage and database servers in wired and wireless environments. All of Stonesoft's solutions are designed to Enable the Secure, Highly Available EnterpriseSM. For more information about Stonesoft Corporation and its products and services, please visit http://www.stonesoft.com. About StoneBeat Clustering Platform The StoneBeat Clustering Platform is an OEM solution for third party application vendors that addresses the five issues required for effective network operations - scalability, load balancing, fault tolerance, online maintenance, and transparency. To maximize gateway/server performance, Stonesoft's StoneBeat Clustering Platform supports dynamic load balancing between nodes. StoneBeat load balancing is performed by a distributed algorithm and requires no interaction with any external devices or software. For optimal distribution of the network traffic, the algorithm uses each node's performance as input. The StoneBeat Clustering Platform features a Clustering API for maintaining customer connections and preserving transaction state. # # # Stonesoft, StoneBeat, StoneGate and StoneBeat Clustering Platform are property of Stonesoft Corporation. All other company and product names are property of their respective holders. Contact First Hop Ltd: Anne-Mari Kuivas, Sales Director First Hop Ltd tel +358 9 2517 2339 GSM +358 400 986 498 annemari.kuivas@firsthop.com Heli Harri, Communications Officer First Hop Ltd tel +358 9 2517 2345 GSM +358 40 7184 799 heli.harri@firsthop.com Contact Stonesoft Corporation: Erik Motelay Stonesoft Corporation +358 9 4767 11 erik.motelay@stonesoft.com Guy Powell Stonesoft, Inc. 770.668.1125 guy.powell@stonesoft.com Ellie McLoughlin/Vicki Hughes Midnight Communications +44 0 1273 666 200 ellie@midnight.co.uk/vicki@midnight.co.uk Valdis Hellevik/Teresa Smith McLean Public Relations, Inc. 650.685.3850 valdis@mcleanpr.com/teresa@mcleanpr.com ------------------------------------------------------------ This information was brought to you by BIT http://www.bit.se The following files are available for download: http://www.bit.se/bitonline/2001/05/09/20010509BIT00430/bit0001.doc http://www.bit.se/bitonline/2001/05/09/20010509BIT00430/bit0001.pdf