Excedent API Provides Email System Integration With Third Party Applications

Blacksburg, VA (April 22, 2003) - Excedent Technologies, a global leader in business email hosting, anti-virus and Spam filtering solutions today announced the official release of its Application Programming Interface (API). The platform independent API provides all customers with the ability to securely integrate every facet of their email service with custom tools and third party applications. Built upon the open standards of XML Web Services, customers can remotely "connect" to Excedent's email management tools using a wide variety of SOAP enabled programming languages such as Java, ASP, Perl, and .NET.

"The API was designed with one primary requirement," said Bill Boebel, Chief Technical Officer for Excedent. "We needed to securely expose all of Excedent's core email management and account provisioning functionality, using a widely supported protocol. This advance is a clear example of Excedent's continued commitment to Channel Partners within the service provider market."

Channel Partners are able to leverage the API to securely provision customer domains, mailboxes and related services in real-time using their own in-house systems. The API provides functions for grouping customer domains into sub-accounts and assigning delegated administration rights, as well as providing class-of-service controls for adjusting each customer's allotted storage space, number of mailboxes and Spam filtering and virus scanning settings. This puts the end customer in full control of their email solution, and reduces burdens on critical technical support resources for the service provider. Customers have full user-level control to add and remove mailboxes and aliases, adjust storage space, edit Spam filtering settings, and view usage and filtering statistics.

Excedent currently provides email and webmail hosting with integrated anti-virus and junk email protection to over 1,000 customers worldwide. Every customer is provided with a secure control panel for administering email accounts, aliases, Spam filtering settings and a multitude of other administration options. In addition, service providers like Dotzer Internet are able to group customer domains into sub-accounts and have the capability to assign delegated administration rights to their customers and end users.

Single domain customers also have access to a subset of the API, which allows for remote mailbox creation, LDAP and password changes, mail forwarding, auto-responders, and statistical queries. This is especially useful for customers that require flexible account signup, or who need their email accounts and passwords to seamlessly integrate with existing user applications.

"Our email system API is a crucial component of our service provider offering," commented Pat Matthews, CEO of Excedent. "In the past, many service providers have been reluctant to outsource their customer email to third parties because of branding, control and integration issues. Having the ability to seamlessly integrate our hosted email system and control functionalities with in-house and third party applications has enabled us to win several large deals in the service provider market. As email systems and securities like Spam and viruses grow more complex, service providers must be able to keep up with customer demand for best of breed, secure email hosting services. As a Channel Partner, service providers are able to quickly turn email hosting from a cost and resource burden into a revenue and profit center."

About Excedent
Excedent Technologies is a global leader in business email hosting solutions, providing small businesses and service providers around the world with secure, reliable, Spam-free, Virus-free email. The company is privately held and serves more than 1,000 customers worldwide.