Hewlett-Packard and messaging vendor Critical Path are joining
forces to offer a hosted e-mail service.
From the first quarter of next year, the companies will jointly
sell and support hosted services including e-mail, instant
messaging, wireless access, group scheduling and file storage.
The offering will be based on Critical Path's messaging software
and hosted on HP servers at its data centres in Europe, North
America and Asia.
The services will target carriers and other service providers,
corporations looking to replace existing e-mail systems or extend
them to workers in factories or remote locations, and small
business/home office users.
HP already offers hosted messaging services based on Microsoft's
Exchange software and will continue to do so. It chose to add
Critical Path to its roster in part because its software is popular
among carriers, and the deal will help HP to compete more
effectively in that market against Sun Microsystems and IBM, said
Joe Hogan, vice-president of marketing for HP's managed services
group.
Critical Path has a suite of messaging products that it has
licensed to some 200 carriers and 750 enterprises globally for
deployment in-house. It also hosts Web-based e-mail services for
500 carriers, service providers and large corporations.
With the HP deal, its hosted offerings will expand to include other
capabilities in its software platform such as instant messaging,
wireless access and file storage.
Outsourcing its data centre operations to HP will also allow
Critical Path to focus its resources on developing the messaging
products it sells. With the help of HP's sales and support teams,
the deal should also help Critical Path reach more customers and
provide better service, said Critical Path chief executive officer
Bill McGlashan.