PHOENIX, AZ - March 21, 2001 - Today at Pulver.com's Voice on the Net (VON), Indigo Software debuted a Presence and Instant Messaging solution based entirely on the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) standard, recording a milestone world-first in the IP communications industry.

Simply put, presence information is used by Internet users to advertise their availability or willingness to engage in various types of communications. This information can be valuably utilized to exchange messages or to send notifications that are instantly delivered to the chosen destination. Hence, the principal requirement of an Instant Messaging (IM) system is to offer users a straightforward way to deliver their messages.

Having already addressed the issue of establishing real time communications between people, SIP today is also viewed as an ideal instrument to both signal and carry the presence and IM information between users. Consequently, an IM solution based on SIP is set to challenge the multi-vendor, proprietary IM solutions currently on offer from AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo among others.

"The market currently supports a number of non-interoperable, proprietary IM systems, which lack a unifying glue to underpin them," said Emmanuel Bertrand, CEO and CTO of Indigo Software. "This frustrating absence of a common standard has created islands in an otherwise unified communications network. The Indigo first-to-market SIP-based solution is intended to blaze the trail to a harmonized communications landscape that blends voice and IM features."

"Integrating calls and presence provides a powerful new service that shows the advantages of combining different SIP services. It is encouraging to see an implementation that explores and validates this concept, " commented SIP co-author Professor Henning Schulzrinne, Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Department of Columbia University, New York.

"This SIP-based IM application we have developed is evidence of how the core SIP signaling mechanisms can be readily augmented by powerful yet simple extensions," added Nicolas Dramais, Software Design Engineer at Indigo.

An example of an application preceeding its standard, IM has already surpassed email in terms of global traffic volume and has shown itself to be an easily and quickly embraced technology. With the number of instant messages sent expected to approach 2 trillion per year by 2004, IM has already established itself as the elusive application to kickstart the market for integrated communications products.

About Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)

An Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard, SIP is an open, Internet-genuine protocol for establishing and managing multi-party, mixed-media sessions over converged networks. SIP enables the creation and deployment of feature-rich services that go far beyond simple VoIP calls. More information about SIP can be found at http://www.cs.columbia.edu/sip

About Indigo Software

With operations in both the US and Europe, Indigo Software is a forward-thinking software developer, architecting new Internet communications solutions for a broad range of service providers, including ISPs, communications ASPs, IP carriers and Next-Gen operators. Capitalizing on its award-winning, expandable communications software framework, Indigo provides a unique ensemble of Internet-infrastructure software components based on Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and other Internet-genuine technologies sharing SIP's endowments. Devising unprecedented communications software solutions for converged networks, Indigo gives an ever-expanding service providers market the power to transform the experience of integrated communications for a generation of customers with Internet savvy.
http://www.indigosw.com

For further information, please contact :

Edward Keegan Head of Business Development Indigo Software +32 2 235 09 45 edward@indigosw.com

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March 21, 2001 - Indigo Software First to Demonstrate
Presence and Instant Messaging System Based Entirely on SIP