MSExchangeReviews.com

EMC Avamar Deduplication Enables Faster, Smaller Backups to Disk;Lessens Strain on Production Systems; and Slows Acquisition of New Storage

HOPKINTON, Mass. – April 6, 2009 – EMC Corporation (NYSE:EMC), the world leader in information infrastructure solutions, today announced that LightEdge Solutions, Inc. is optimizing its managed backup and recovery services with EMC Avamar®.  LightEdge is a leading provider of hosted communications and IT services to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

“As our business expanded, our legacy backup and recovery solution lacked the scalability and features to support a larger, more sophisticated customer base,” said Jim Masterson, LightEdge’s Chairman and CEO. “Licensing costs and growing backup volumes also made it more challenging to offer the service at a competitive price.”

Based in Des Moines, Iowa, LightEdge replaced its 58-terabyte NetApp storage environment with an EMC CLARiiON CX4 networked storage system to store its own application data, including Microsoft Exchange Server email and Microsoft SQL Server databases.  After evaluating CommVault and other solutions, LightEdge also replaced its Syncsort and NetApp backup system with EMC Avamar to enable customers to back up and restore emails, databases, documents, check images and other data, as well as back up its own production data.  With data deduplication, Avamar automatically identifies and removes redundant data from the backup process before sending it over an IP network to Avamar Data Stores at multiple LightEdge’s datacenters across the U.S.

“By removing redundant data, we’ve cut our costs of delivering managed backup and recovery services, which allows us to offer a more competitively priced product,” said Jeff Springborn, LightEdge’s President and COO.  “Some of our customers with large backup volumes and limited network bandwidth can now complete their backups within their scheduled windows.  Not only do we solve an important problem for them, but we have broadened the potential market we can address in a burgeoning market for these services.”

As the migration is underway, LightEdge has been able to compare Avamar side by side with the legacy solution.  In one business area, LightEdge used Avamar to execute full backups of several hundred servers overnight recently.  Although 4.2 terabytes of data was protected, total amount of data transferred was only 154 gigabytes due to data deduplication.  The legacy solution, on the other hand, backed up less than 100 servers in another business area and transferred 3.3 terabytes of data during the same amount of time.  When the migration is completed, LightEdge will reduce the amount of data for backups by more than 3 terabytes.

“While SMBs are aggressively cutting costs, they’re still dealing with how to manage the explosion of data,” said Masterson.  “Our business is accelerating because we provide a solution that does not require a large investment – something many SMBs want to avoid, even in a better business climate.  Not only are our customers gaining higher-quality data protection with Avamar, but they’re actually saving money by increasing the efficiency of their backups.”

“With faster, smaller backups, there is less strain on our production systems, which helps us slow acquisition of new storage,” said Springborn.  “Avamar’s functionality also has made our backup and restoration process more automated and reliable.  Besides its ease-of-use, Avamar cost us roughly one-fifth of our legacy system and we expect to have a return on investment in a year.  By passing these savings to our customers, we have made our backup and recovery offerings much more cost-competitive to our target market.”

“EMC has been a true partner with us to bring this service to market,” said Masterson. “We’ve been very impressed with the high quality of EMC’s technology and its ability to bring backup efficiency to our hosted applications and customer platforms.  Additionally, the EMC team’s commitment to making our relationship as productive and effective as possible has been instrumental.  With EMC, we’re able to offer truly innovative, enterprise-class hosted services that our SMB customers previously would have been out of reach.”

“LightEdge is a great example of how a company can leverage cutting-edge technologies not only for their own business, but for its customers as well,” said Rob Emsley, Senior Director of Storage Software Product Marketing, EMC Corporation.  “As data protection requirements continue to rise, LightEdge is giving SMBs a cost-effective and efficient way to backup their critical data, without carrying the burden of a physical footprint.  We’re pleased to work with LightEdge and look forward to helping them maximize their business as their needs continue to grow in the future.”

EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) is the world’s leading developer and provider of information infrastructure technology and solutions that enable organizations of all sizes to transform the way they compete and create value from their information. Information about EMC’s products and services can be found at www.EMC.com.

# # #

EMC, Avamar, and CLARiiON are registered trademarks of EMC Corporation. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

About LightEdge
LightEdge is the only hosted services partner fully dedicated to providing a full breadth of communications and IT services to small and medium-sized businesses looking for a better way to focus on their core business, not the technology that supports it. For more information, visit www.lightedge.com.

LightEdge®, the LightEdge logo and Scale-on-Demand™ are trademarks, registered trademarks, or service marks of LightEdge Solutions, Inc.

Acme Packet Net-Net SBC streamlines and simplifies delivery of service based on BroadSoft and Microsoft solutions

BURLINGTON, MA, March 24, 2009 — Acme Packet® (NASDAQ: APKT), the leader in session border control solutions, today announced that LightEdge, the leading hosted services provider dedicated to the communications and IT needs of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), has deployed Acme Packet’s Net-Net® session border controller (SBC) to deliver its recently-announced Hosted Unified Communications, a new service based on BroadSoft’s BroadWorks® Voice-over-IP (VoIP) application platform as well as Microsoft Solution for Hosted Messaging and Collaboration. LightEdge deployed Acme Packet SBCs to simplify new customer activation and enable “click-to-call” functionality in tandem with the BroadSoft platform.

The LightEdge service provides one platform for voice, email, instant messaging and calendaring, allowing a user to collaborate in real-time within the office and outside the office. Hosted Unified Communications is part of the LightEdge Connected Office suite of products, and helps SMBs more easily and cost-effectively obtain unified communications (UC) as a hosted service. LightEdge Connected Office suite includes Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 for hosted email, BroadSoft BroadWorks Hosted PBX VoIP, Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 for instant messaging and presence, Microsoft Live Meeting and Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. The solution can be purchased incrementally or as an entire integrated bundle to support a business’ e-mail, calendaring, conferencing, voice and collaboration needs.

Acme Packet’s Net-Net SBC was deployed in the LightEdge network to help simplify the process of activating new customers. The SBC’s ability to enable seamless communications for LightEdge customers by mediating and controlling signaling flows between SIP phones and LightEdge service elements reduces interoperability issues, leading to shorter service activation cycles with fewer trouble tickets and higher customer satisfaction.

The Net-Net SBC also works in tandem with the BroadSoft platform to enable “click-to-call,” a feature of the LightEdge service that provides end users with the ability to initiate or receive VoIP calls simply by clicking a button on their desktop.  Because the Acme Packet SBC can effectively manipulate SIP messages, LightEdge can offer click-to-call or other features that boost productivity and improve the business communications experience for LightEdge customers.

“Our customers expect strong ease of use from our Hosted Unified Communications service,” said Jeff Springborn, president and COO of LightEdge. “Acme Packet’s SBCs enable that while giving us the ability to offer a very high-quality integrated user experience.”

“The integration of hosted voice with existing desktop applications offers a huge opportunity for increasing overall business efficiency,” said Dino Di Palma, vice president of sales and business development at Acme Packet.  “LightEdge’s use of our SBCs further validates the business benefits of supplementing basic VoIP and UC functions with advanced session border control.”

About LightEdge
LightEdge is the only hosted services partner fully dedicated to providing a full breadth of communications and IT services to small and medium-sized businesses looking for a better way to focus on their core business, not the technology that supports it. For more information, visit www.lightedge.com.

About Acme Packet
Acme Packet, Inc. (NASDAQ: APKT), the leader in session border control solutions, enables the delivery of trusted, first-class interactive communications—voice, video and multimedia sessions—and data services across IP network borders. Our Net-Net family of session border controllers, multiservice security gateways and session routing proxies supports multiple applications in service provider, large enterprise and contact center networks—from VoIP trunking to hosted enterprise and residential services to fixed-mobile convergence. They satisfy critical security, service assurance and regulatory requirements in wireline, cable and wireless networks; and support multiple protocols—SIP, H.323, MGCP/NCS and H.248—and multiple border points—interconnect, access and data center. Our products have been selected by more than 635 customers in 92 countries, including 29 of the top 30, and 89 of the top 100 service providers in the world. For more information, contact us at +1 781.328.4400, or visit www.acmepacket.com.

LightEdge®, the LightEdge logo and Scale-on-Demand™ are trademarks, registered trademarks, or service marks of LightEdge Solutions, Inc.

Additional talent brings Business Continuity Strategy and Planning expertise to LCS

DES MOINES, IA, March 10, 2009 – LightEdge, the leading hosted services partner dedicated to the full breadth of communications and IT needs for small and medium-sized businesses (SMB), today announced that the members of Resiliency Solutions, a renowned Business Continuity and Resiliency Planning consulting service have joined LCS (LightEdge Consulting Services).  The combination of skills will allow the company to offer its business customers additional insight and “best practices” regarding risk mitigation, continuity planning, IT reliability, and redundancy.

While Business Continuity and Contingency Planning practices have been active among large companies for years, it has become a rapidly growing trend among small and medium-sized businesses that view information technology as a vital component of their business.  In cases where technology downtime would cause loss of business revenue, a major impact to staff productivity or loss to investors, a clearly defined and actionable Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery plan is an essential part of the business plan.

“The Resiliency Solutions team (now the LCS Business Continuity team) has a very methodical and systematic approach to Business Continuity that will mesh well with both LightEdge’s hosted service offerings and LCS’s premises-based consulting solutions,” said Jeff Springborn, president and COO of LightEdge.  “As businesses rely more heavily on information technology, it is essential for them to design their IT and communications systems for maximum resiliency and understand how to keep critical operations available during an unforeseen business interruption.”

LCS will now offer Business Continuity services, such as:

• Business Impact Analysis – Information gathering and formal inspection to determine the businesses risk factors and attempt to monetize the cost of the risk vs. the cost to mitigate.
• Continuity Planning – Planning related to the human and operational reactions to an unforeseen business interruption.
• Disaster Recovery Planning – Planning focused on redundancies and recovery options related to the company’s mission-critical applications, hardware and communications.
• Scenario Drills/Exercises – Reinforcement of the plan’s execution through structured, facilitated exercises, by gathering business unit and IT teams in a room to play out the response and recovery actions to a hypothetical event
• Maintenance Programs – Incremental ongoing updates to the BC plan to ensure that it meets the company’s changing need.

“Business Continuity consulting is a perfect fit addition to the services that LightEdge currently offers,” said Perry Depew, Certified Recovery Planner for LCS.  “LightEdge customers have already demonstrated their understanding and interest in business continuity by embracing hosted services.  We look forward to strengthening their plans and helping them move to the next level of resiliency.”

LCS operates nationally but will focus its efforts in the upper Midwest: Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Illinois.

About Resiliency Solutions
One of the premiere Midwest Business Continuity specialists, Resiliency Solutions has helped hundreds of clients assess their business continuity risk, create a plan to mitigate them, exercise and maintain the plans to make sure that they are both understood by the staff and effective.

About LCS
LightEdge Consulting Services (LCS) is uniquely positioned as the only communications and IT consultant with the vision and knowledge to bridge the gap between premises-based and hosted technology environments.  The company’s experience with Fortune-500, SMB and hosted environments provides the insight necessary to develop “best practice” solutions for its customers.  For more information, visit www.lightedgeconsulting.com.

About LightEdge
LightEdge is the only hosted services partner fully dedicated to providing a full breadth of communications and IT services to small and medium-sized businesses looking for a better way to focus on their core business, not the technology that supports it.  For more information, visit www.lightedge.com.

LightEdge®, the LightEdge logo and Scale-on-Demand™ are trademarks, registered trademarks, or service marks of LightEdge Solutions, Inc.

LCS (LightEdge Consulting Services) to bridge the gap between premises-based solutions and hosted business IT services for small and medium-sized businesses

DES MOINES, IA, February 24, 2009 – LightEdge, the leading hosted services partner dedicated to the full breadth of communications and IT needs for small and medium-sized businesses (SMB), today announced the formation of LightEdge Consulting Services (LCS), an independently operated consulting subsidiary designed to expand LightEdge’s hosted delivery model to include premises-based solutions, architecture design and implementation. LCS will offer a wide range of business IT consulting services including: discovery/design recommendations, solutions architecture, server maintenance, patch management, backup solutions and virtualization through Hyper-V and VMware. The company can also provide proficiencies and platform design for Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Office Communication Server, Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft SQL implementations and migrations.

The company was formed to provide small and medium-sized businesses accessibility to consultants with a broad base of IT experience. Many businesses have concerns related to their business technology but are unsure of the solutions available and their relative costs and benefits. LCS is in a unique position not only to engage and determine the root cause of these issues, but to provide a clear and cost-effective recommendation for a solution, based on their experience with on-premises solutions for SMB and enterprise businesses, as well as hosted solutions through LightEdge. Once the solution is defined, LCS can step back to an advisory position or implement the solution entirely, including on-going maintenance.

“The opportunity to discuss business needs and potential solutions with someone who is knowledgeable with both traditional office-based solutions and hosted business services is a game-changer for business owners as it gives them access to a wide variety of viable options,” said Jeff Springborn, president and COO of LightEdge. “LCS is an interesting concept in consulting because it is highly personalized for the customer and ultimately delivers the best solution for their needs, whether that is an on-premises solution, a hosted service or a combination of both.”

In recent years, server technology has become more complicated and, as such, requires increased specialization to implement and maintain it. The latest version of Microsoft Exchange Server (2007) includes 5 separate server roles, requiring a platform spanning multiple servers. This level of sophistication has created an additional need in the market for qualified and experienced IT consultants.

“Through our experience working with Fortune 500 companies, small and medium-sized businesses and our understanding of large-scale hosted environments, we have developed ‘best practices’ that can we leverage for our customers to create high reliability platforms,” said John Jarrell, Director of Operations for LCS. “As an adjunct part of a company’s IT staff, LCS can reduce costs and improve efficiency by completing projects that require specialized knowledge and experience.”

LCS operates nationally but will focus its efforts in the upper Midwest: Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Illinois.

About LCS
LightEdge Consulting Services (LCS) is uniquely positioned as the only communications and IT consultant with the vision and knowledge to bridge the gap between premises-based and hosted technology environments. The company’s experience with Fortune-500, SMB and hosted environments provides the insight necessary to develop “best practice” solutions for its customers. For more information, visit www.lightedgeconsulting.com.

About LightEdge
LightEdge is the only hosted services partner fully dedicated to providing a full breadth of communications and IT services to small and medium-sized businesses looking for a better way to focus on their core business, not the technology that supports it. For more information, visit www.lightedge.com.

LightEdge®, the LightEdge logo and Scale-on-Demand™ are trademarks, registered trademarks, or service marks of LightEdge Solutions, Inc.

Research report identifies the world’s most progressive Managed Service Providers

DES MOINES , Iowa — February 17, 2009 – LightEdge Solutions Inc., the leading hosted services partner dedicated to the communications and IT needs for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), today announced that it has been ranked 4th by managed services revenue and 24th overall in Nine Lives Media’s annual MSPmentor 100, a distinguished research report identifying the world’s most progressive managed service providers.

“LightEdge is thrilled to be represented among the best managed service providers in the world,” remarked Jeff Springborn, president and COO of LightEdge Solutions. “Our success has really come from the vision to see the widening gap in communications and IT for small to medium-sized businesses, and the ability of our staff to skillfully execute plans to bring our services to market before our competitors.”

LightEdge operates state-of-the-art data centers in Des Moines, IA; Altoona, IA; Moline, IL and Minneapolis, MN connected by a Cisco-powered MPLS network. The company offers one of the widest breadth of services for business customers including: Voice-over-IP, SIP Trunking, Managed Offsite Backup, Hosted Microsoft Exchange, Hosted Office Communications Server 2007, Collocation, Dedicated Servers and Meshed IP WAN.

The MSPmentor 100 report recognizes the leading companies that are driving and shaping the managed services industry. The MSPmentor 100 report, available at www.MSPmentor.net, is based on data gathered from MSPmentor’s global online survey, conducted October through December 2008. Ranking was based on many variables including:

• Total managed services revenue ( in U.S. dollars, 2008)
• Managed services revenue growth (in U.S. dollars, 2008 vs. 2007)
• Managed service revenue growth (percentage, 2008 vs. 2007)
• Percentage of company revenue from managed services (2008)
• Number of devices managed (2008)
• Devices managed growth, actual number (2008 vs. 2007)
• Devices managed percentage growth (2008 vs. 2007)
• MSP revenue per technician

“There’s no doubting the momentum of managed service providers within the MSPmentor 100,” said Joe Panettieri, editorial director of MSPmentor. “As a whole, MSPmentor 100 companies generated nearly $800 million in managed services revenue in 2008, up a dramatic 46 percent from 2007.”

MSPmentor, produced by Nine Lives Media Inc., is the ultimate guide to managed services. MSPmentor features the industry’s top-ranked blog, research, Webcasts, podcasts and videos. It is the number one online media destination for managed service providers in the world.

About LightEdge
LightEdge is the only hosted services partner fully dedicated to providing a full breadth of communications and IT services to small and medium-sized businesses looking for a better way to focus on their core business, not the technology that supports it. For more information, visit www.lightedge.com.

About Nine Lives Media Inc.
Nine Lives Media Inc. (www.NineLivesMediaInc.com) embraces the changing IT media landscape. In fact, we help to shape it. We focus on highly targeted IT audiences, specialized content and lead generation services. We disrupt established markets and we shape new ones.

Contact:
LightEdge Solutions
Scott Riedel, Director of Marketing
515-471-1256 or

Nine Lives Media Inc:
Joe Panettieri, Editorial Director
631-423-3536 or

First service provider to fully integrate BroadSoft’s hosted business voice with Microsoft’s communications and collaboration software.

DES MOINES, Iowa, REDMOND, Wash., and GAITHERSBURG, Md. — Feb. 10, 2009 — LightEdge Solutions Inc., the leading hosted services partner dedicated to the communications and IT needs for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), Microsoft Corp. and BroadSoft Inc. today announced the general availability of Hosted Unified Communications, a new service based on BroadSoft’s BroadWorks® Voice-over-IP (VoIP) application platform and Microsoft Solution for Hosted Messaging and Collaboration. The solution provides one platform for voice, e-mail, instant messaging and calendaring, allowing a user to work anywhere and collaborate in real time. Hosted Unified Communications is part of the LightEdge Connected Office suite of products, and helps SMBs more easily and cost-effectively obtain unified communications (UC) as a hosted service. LightEdge Connected Office suite includes Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 for hosted e-mail, BroadSoft BroadWorks Hosted PBX VoIP, Office Communications Server 2007 for instant messaging and presence, Microsoft Office Live Meeting and Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. The solution can be purchased incrementally or as an entire integrated bundle to support a business’ e-mail, calendaring, conferencing, voice and collaboration needs.

“Our goal is to offer SMBs a better and more cost-effective way to provide communications and IT systems to their employees,” said Jeff Springborn, president and COO of LightEdge. “Hosted Unified Communications helps us reinforce this aim, by providing an attractive alternative to purchasing, implementing and maintaining business communications systems in-house.”

Hosted Unified Communications offers a higher guaranteed level of service, managed and maintained 24×7 with faster provisioning than on-premises systems. The new solution streamlines communications for employees, allowing them to locate and communicate with the right person, in real time. It delivers PC-to-PC voice and video, webconferencing, and enterprise instant messaging and presence awareness while helping SMBs maintain operational control by converting a traditional upfront capital expense to a monthly operational expense.

“In today’s economy, it’s important to offer SMBs the flexibility to choose whether to deploy a UC solution in a hosted environment or on-premises, depending on their individual needs,” said John Zanni, general manager of Worldwide Software + Services Industry for the Communications Sector at Microsoft. “Hosted Unified Communications utilizes the BroadSoft® platform and Microsoft software to deliver a protected, fully hosted unified messaging and communications solution that allows SMBs to focus on their core business, without spending their time, money and resources managing a complex VoIP infrastructure.”

“Forward-thinking providers like LightEdge understand the powerful capabilities that result from combining best-of-breed solutions — business communications from BroadSoft and Microsoft’s business productivity software — and are able to deliver UC in an innovative way,” said David Bukovsky, vice president of products at BroadSoft. “There’s a growing demand among SMBs for UC to be delivered in a software as a service model as it enables them to reap all the productivity benefits of UC without the burden of deploying and maintaining UC solutions on their own. The LightEdge deployment validates the delivery model for integrated BroadSoft-Microsoft applications and represents a milestone for bringing hosted UC to the underserved SMB market.”

LightEdge also announced that it has achieved Microsoft Gold Certified Partner status in the Hosting Solutions Competency, distinguishing itself as an expert in the hosting industry. Microsoft’s Hosting Solutions Competency, introduced in 2008, provides hosting partners with access to a unique set of resources including hosting tools, sales and support strategies, and training opportunities.

More information on Hosted Unified Communications and the LightEdge Connected Office suite of hosted communication services can be obtained by calling (877) 771-3343 or visiting http://www.lightedge.com.

About LightEdge
LightEdge is the only hosted services partner fully dedicated to providing a full breadth of communications and IT services to small and medium-sized businesses looking for a better way to focus on their core business, not the technology that supports it. For more information, visit www.lightedge.com.

About BroadSoft
BroadSoft® provides VoIP application software that enables the delivery of hosted telephony and multimedia services. After the 2008 acquisitions Sylantro and the GENBAND M6 product line, BroadSoft has emerged as the undisputed market leader of VoIP application servers. BroadSoft’s family of carrier-class products, including its award-winning flagship BroadWorks® technology, empowers wireless, wireline and cable carriers to deliver next-generation voice and multimedia applications and advanced features that enable them to increase revenue, enhance competitive differentiation and elevate customer satisfaction. BroadSoft’s products deliver the scale, open architecture and reliability that the world’s leading telecommunications companies demand to serve mission-critical enterprise and residential broadband customers. BroadSoft provides VoIP applications to eight of the top 10 and 14 of the top 25 largest carriers worldwide, as measured by recent annual revenue, including KPN, Korea Telecom, Qwest, SingTel, Sprint, Swisscom, Telefonica de Espana, Telstra, T-Systems, and Verizon. For additional information, go to www.BroadSoft.com.

About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

LightEdge Solutions® and the LightEdge Solutions logo, and Scale-on-Demand™ are trademarks, registered trademarks, or service marks of LightEdge Solutions, Inc.
BroadSoft and BroadWorks are registered trademarks of BroadSoft, Inc. All other names are trademarks of their respective owners.

For more information, press only:
Alex Vaught, Weber Shandwick for Microsoft, (425) 452-5462, [email protected]
Scott Riedel, LightEdge, (515) 471-1256, [email protected]
Kristin Martell, BroadSoft, (240) 364-5147, [email protected]

Note to editors: If you are interested in viewing additional information on Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft Web page at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass on Microsoft’s corporate information pages. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may since have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/contactpr.mspx.

DES MOINES, IA, December 3, 2008 – LightEdge, the leading hosted services partner dedicated to the full breadth of communications and IT needs for small and medium-sized businesses (SMB), today announced the launch of LightEdge SIP Trunking, a service that reduces the complexity and costs associated with delivering voice systems for a small to medium-sized (SMB) or multiple site business. LightEdge will offer the service as part of its Advanced Voice Solutions suite in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Missouri and Illinois over its privately managed Cisco Powered IP network.

“LightEdge is continually developing voice alternatives which simplify administration and reduce overall costs for small and medium-sized businesses,” said Jeff Springborn, president and chief operating officer of LightEdge. “At a time when there is such turmoil and uncertainty in the market, we feel fortunate to be able to offer a service that can positively impact a company’s bottom line.”

SIP Trunking Overview
SIP Trunking is a way for a business to exchange voice traffic between an IP PBX and an Internet Telephony Service Provider (ITSP) over a dynamic broadband connection rather than physical line or PRI with the phone company. The ITSP in turn connects to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) to terminate the call. A SIP Trunk can effectively save money and simplify operations in several ways:

• Traditional PRI circuits are capable of supporting 23 channels. Businesses needing 5 channels or 25 channels must purchase enough PRI circuits to satisfy their needs, leading to wasted capability and additional costs. In addition, PRI termination hardware is expensive and may not support future capabilities. In contrast, SIP Trunks can be purchased in any quantity and additional trunks may be added as the company grows. IP PBXs don’t require an additional PRI port and can leverage a low cost Ethernet port to interconnect.
• SIP Trunking is a converged technology – meaning both voice and data traffic flow over the same broadband connection. Bandwidth over an Internet connection is dynamically allocated between both voice and data using a process known as QoS (Quality of Service) to ensure that voice traffic is routed with priority. This convergence allows a business to extract full value out of its Internet investment.
• SIP Trunks, Internet service and Long Distance are delivered from a single provider for a single support contact and a unified bill covering all services.

“SIP Trunking allows businesses to leverage an existing IP PBX to reduce costs, but it is also possible to get additional features not available through their existing PBX,” remarked Mike McHenry, Director of Product Development for LightEdge, “The LightEdge Personal Mobility Pack allows users access to incredible mobility options such as Simultaneous Ring, Sequential Ring and Remote Office over their SIP Trunk.”

LightEdge SIP Trunking is compatible with select IP PBX systems from Aastra, Adtran, Asterisk, Avaya, Cisco, Digium, Microsoft Response Point, Mitel, Nortel , Panasonic, Toshiba and Vertical. For specific models and configurations please consult with LightEdge sales and voice engineering staff.

About LightEdge
LightEdge is the only hosted services partner fully dedicated to providing a full breadth of communications and IT services to small and medium-sized businesses looking for a better way to focus on their core business, not the technology that supports it. For more information, visit www.lightedge.com.

LightEdge Solutions®, the LightEdge Solutions logo and Scale-on-Demand™ are trademarks, registered trademarks, or service marks of LightEdge Solutions, Inc.

DES MOINES, IA, October 30, 2008 – LightEdge, the leading hosted services partner dedicated to the full breadth of communications and IT needs for small and medium-sized businesses (SMB), today announced a full voice platform upgrade to refresh hardware and enable new features for business customers by updating the softswitch application. This infrastructure overhaul will allow LightEdge to continue growing its voice service customer base and will serve the future of the company through an inherently scalable engineering design.

“This initiative is really a testament to our commitment to driving service levels and functionality by implementing cutting-edge technology,” Jeff Springborn, president and COO of LightEdge. “Through the upgrade, our Voice-over-IP customers will begin to receive valuable new calling features without any additional costs. Continuous evolution is one of the big advantages of a hosted voice system.”

Several new voice features will become available through the initial platform, with additional features released to customers over the next six months.

Busy Lamp Field – Displays a call state indicator on the handset for users that are being monitored.
Call Forward (Not Reachable) – This is an essential business continuity feature for automating call forwarding in a crisis situation. If the platform can’t connect with an office because of a line cut, power loss or other outage the call will automatically be rerouted to a predetermined alternate phone number.
Diversion Inhibitor – Can be used in conjunction with any Call Forwarding service to ensure that call goes to voice mail after the appropriate number of rings rather than continuing to ring an alternate phone.
Updated Receptionist Console – A new look and feel to the receptionist console allows front office staff to quickly see the activity state of users on the phone system to efficiently manage and distribute all incoming calls.
Updated Advanced Voice Solutions Integrated Toolbar – Allows users to access voice features from a toolbar within Outlook or Internet Explorer.
“At a time when the benefits of Voice-over-IP are resonating in the market, we are re-investing in our voice platform to ensure that we continue to have the highest level of service and leading feature-set available,” remarked Mike McHenry, Director of Product Development for LightEdge. “Our product development team has developed a great deal of momentum through the past six months and will soon be working to further integrate voice into our other communications offerings. Competitively, this puts LightEdge in an enviable position.”

The next development milestone for the LightEdge AVS platform is to integrate the voice platform with the hosted communication and collaboration applications within the “LightEdge Connected Office” suite. This will allow voice functionality from within Microsoft Communicator and presence indicators in Exchange, SharePoint and Communicator. Full integration is expected by Q1 2009.

About LightEdge
LightEdge is the only hosted services partner fully dedicated to providing a full breadth of communications and IT services to small and medium-sized businesses looking for a better way to focus on their core business, not the technology that supports it. For more information, visit www.lightedge.com.

LightEdge Solutions®, the LightEdge Solutions logo and Scale-on-Demand™ are trademarks, registered trademarks, or service marks of LightEdge Solutions, Inc.

Hosted offering gives small and medium-sized businesses access to mobile communication and collaboration services through a cost-effective Scale-on-Demand model

DES MOINES, IA, October 7, 2008 – LightEdge Solutions, the leading hosted services partner dedicated to the full breadth of communications and IT needs for small and medium-sized businesses (SMB), announced today the launch of a new Hosted Microsoft Exchange 2007 platform. This fully redundant platform will enable SMBs to implement a mobile Exchange environment for their employees in a simple, hosted scale-on-demand model rather than an expensive and time-consuming on-premise implementation.

Microsoft Exchange, the dominant application for delivering corporate e-mail, personal and corporate calendars, task lists and contacts in enterprise settings, has been deemed too difficult and too expensive for most small businesses. This offering from LightEdge levels the playing field for the SMB by giving businesses of all sizes access to the communication and productivity tools in Microsoft Exchange in a monthly, “per-mailbox” fee structure that emphasizes the benefits of the service rather than owning and depreciating corporate infrastructure.

“We think that the timing of this offering couldn’t be more perfect,” said Jim Masterson, chairman and CEO of LightEdge Solutions. “Businesses fully understand the benefits of Exchange and access to Exchange from mobile phone, but the present economy is forcing business owners to rethink capital purchases. Given the instability in the market, Hosted Exchange really is the best option for businesses that are either ready to adopt Exchange or migrate from a legacy in-house implementation.”

Hosted Exchange customers can utilize the features of Exchange over their corporate network using Outlook 2007, securely over the Internet with Outlook Web Access or on a mobile device through BlackBerry Mobility Services or Microsoft ActiveSync. This anytime, anywhere access allows busy employees to feel connected wherever they roam during their business day and after-hours.

LightEdge is currently offering three services levels including a simplified Outlook Web Access level, as well as 2 GB and 4 GB Full Exchange seats. Customer can learn more and sign-up for a free 30-day trial by visiting http:www.lightedge.com/exchange.

About LightEdge Solutions
LightEdge Solutions is the only hosted services partner fully dedicated to providing the breadth of communications and IT services to small and medium-sized businesses looking for a better way to focus on their core business, not the technology that supports it. For more information, visit www.lightedge.com.

LightEdge Solutions®, the LightEdge Solutions logo and Scale-on-Demand™ are trademarks, registered trademarks, or service marks of LightEdge Solutions, Inc.