SYDNEY, Australia, and READING, England -- 28 August 2002 -- Custom Technology and Samsung SDS today announced their distribution partnership to bring Samsung Contact to the Australian market.

"Custom Technology is pleased to be working with Samsung SDS to deliver Samsung Contact to the Australian market", said Gordon Hubbard, Managing Director, Custom Technology. "CustomTech has played a pioneering role in promoting business focused Linux products in the Australian market and we see Samsung Contact as being the catalyst for many businesses to migrate away from Microsoft Exchange onto low cost Linux and UNIX platforms".

"We are excited to be working with a proven partner such as CustomTech," said Richi Jennings, Chief Architect of Samsung Contact. "Small and medium enterprise customers definitely need the type of solutions focus and tailored support that CustomTech provide. CustomTech's long-term focus on low ownership costs, robustness, and customer freedom fit very well with our way of thinking. Samsung Contact provides all of these attributes, by design."

"We look forward to supporting HP's existing OpenMail® customers to ensure a smooth transition to Samsung Contact", said Hubbard. HP's OpenMail® technology was chosen for the core of Samsung Contact because of its reputation as the most reliable and scalable email product available. The highly successful email server was used by more than 60% of Fortune 1000 companies, currently with some 5 million active users world-wide. Samsung has a robust plan under way to extend the offering into a powerful, seamless unified communications tool -- based around a truly unified message store -- enabling any message to be sent and picked up via any device: phone, fax, desktop computer, the web, or a range of wireless devices. Research and development are key priorities for Samsung, with investment in Samsung Contact more than doubling that previously provided by HP. This investment is headed up through a newly established unified communications business unit, tasked with building Samsung Contact into a world market leader.

Samsung Contact Server supports the Microsoft Outlook® desktop client - including collaboration features, such as calendaring, scheduling, delegation and offline synchronisation - and the native Samsung Contact Client which provides Outlook-like features at lower cost and complexity. The new Samsung Contact web clients also allow remote access from internet cafes and wireless handhelds.

Samsung Contact Server runs on HP-UX, IBM AIX, Solaris and Linux. The native Samsung Contact Client runs on Windows, Linux and the Samsung Contact Server for web access.

Availability

Custom Technology is shipping Samsung Contact now. A FREE trial CD is available that allows unlimited users for a 30 day trial period and also includes a FREE ongoing 5 user server license.

About Custom Technology Australia

Custom Technology Australia Pty Ltd provides value added product distribution, technical support, integration and development services for Open Systems including Linux and UNIX. Our vision is to deliver Open Systems that provide real competitive advantage to our business partners. Visit Custom Technology at http://www.customtech.com.au

About Samsung Contact

Samsung Contact is an email server product, offering the lowest total cost of ownership, extreme scalability and solid reliability to email desktop clients. Amongst the clients supported is Microsoft Outlook, including the "collaboration" features (such as shared calendars, delegation and offline folders) which are otherwise only accessible when using a Microsoft server. Customers can easily migrate to Samsung Contact from leading email products such as Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino and OpenMail. The product has been developed following Samsung's win of perpetual licensing rights over Hewlett-Packard's highly successful OpenMail technology. Investment and commitment to the roadmap will continue to build on the success of OpenMail, and expectations are that Samsung Contact will become the market leader in the field of seamless unified communications. Future development will also encompass technologies such as J2EE and XML. For more information, please visit their website at http://www.samsungcontact.com.

About Samsung SDS

Samsung SDS Korea, led by CEO Mr Hong Ki Kim, delivers packaged solutions, professional services, global marketing and Internet-focused services and solutions. The company is the leading systems integration, systems management and e-business company in Korea, employing 6,500 people worldwide and generating $1.3 billion (US) in revenues. It has been ranked 38th in Software 500, a survey of software companies around the world by a globally recognised software magazine. For more information, please visit their website at http://www.sds.samsung.com.
 

Press Contact
Gordon Hubbard
Managing Director
gordon@customtech.com.au
Tel: 02 9659 9590
Fax: 02 9659 9510

OpenMail is a registered trademark of the Hewlett-Packard Company in the USA, the UK and other countries.
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. All other products, brands or company names herein may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.