Viatel the perfect host for NetDespatch in 1 million deal

Latest in string of high value hosting deals for Viatel

Providing managed application support for logistics and transport companies

Viatel, the pan-European communications company, today announced that it has signed a deal worth £1 million over 5 years with web based application provider NetDespatch. The deal outsources management and maintenance of NetDespatch\'s web based systems and servers to Viatel and is the latest in a string of high value deals for the operator.

NetDespatch is a web based application service provider to transport and logistics companies across the world. Its broad portfolio of web services enables transport companies to add additional functionality to their websites, allowing their customers to request quotes, order and track their jobs via the web, without any web site development or capital expenditure. These services will now be run from dedicated servers located in Viatel\'s managed Egham data centre, guaranteeing a secure and robust service via a 100Mbit Ethernet pipe.

Becky Clark, Chief Executive of NetDespatch commented: "We\'re pleased to have found in Viatel a professional ally that shares our values of reliability and high levels of customer service."

"As an outsourced service provider every minute of downtime is a minute we\'re disappointing our customers and their end users. Viatel provides the reassurance that downtime is a kept to a minimum."

Prior to the shift of the NetDespatch service to Viatel managed servers, both parties agreed to a robust service level agreement package that assigned clear areas of responsibility to each company. This SLA ensured a close working relationship and less room for error. For instance, hardware and software upgrades are only applied after consultation between the parties and thorough testing.

In addition to active protection against malicious attacks through the managed CISCO firewall, and offsite backup, the website and equipment is monitored 24 hours a day by trained IT professionals within Viatel\'s network operations centres in the UK and Amsterdam. To protect against hardware failure all systems are monitored by trained Viatel staff with a guaranteed two-hour hot swap of all components, combined with threshold monitoring to allow replacement prior to failure.

Roberto Bonanzinga, Senior Vice President Marketing and Business Development of Viatel said: "Businesses live and die on the strength and reliability of their service. We\'ve invested in our systems and support structure to ensure businesses such as NetDespatch can work in alliance with Viatel to provide excellent service to their customers."

25/10/2004

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Notes to editors

NetDespatch\'s applications are supported by a high availability hardware platform consisting of multi-tier load-balanced servers protected by managed CISCO firewalls and intrusion detection.

About NetDespatch

NetDespatch (www.netdespatch.com) is a provider of innovative enterprise strength solutions for transport companies, based on web services architecture, and accessible through any web browser as a hosted, pay-as-you-go \'utility computing\' service. The comprehensive portfolio includes customer-centric applications for web booking, quoting and tracking, management information, integrated mobile communications, and XML servers to handle requests for web services invoked by other servers. NetDespatch\'s open (Java/XML) architecture also makes it an ideal integration platform. Companies can use NetDespatch to extend existing systems to incorporate e-business, logistics and mobile applications; to provide Internet based custom-built solutions, and to build flexible transport management services.

About Viatel

Viatel is a pan-European business communications company operating across 6 European markets, including the UK, France and Germany. It has more than 10,000 business customers, providing them a range of business communication services that help companies of all sizes to access the internet, connect their people and places, manage their web applications and increase the security of their data. Headed by Lucy Woods, formerly CEO of WorldCom EMEA and BT, the company employs 200 people throughout Western Europe.

For further information on Viatel, please visit www.viatel.com

For further information please call:

James Ralph or Nick Keegan on +44 (0)20 7340 0430

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