Mirapoint And Blackboard Partner To Deliver Secure Hosted Email Solution For Universities, Colleges And K-12 Schools

October 24, 2006; 04:45 AM

Washington, DC – Mirapoint, a leading provider of secure messaging solutions, and Blackboard Inc. (NASDAQ: BBBB), a leading provider of enterprise software and services to the education industry, today announced that the companies are partnering to deliver a hosted email solution to K-12 schools, colleges and universities. As a result of this partnership, all members of academic institutions can now receive a complete hosted solution with email service that is secure and reliable.

“Email has long been an extremely important campus application for teaching and learning,” said Richi Jennings, analyst and practice leader at Ferris Research. “Users have come to expect their email to be always available. By combining Mirapoint’s messaging technology and Blackboard’s experience in delivering hosted services, educational institutions can provide reliable, spam-filtered email services to students and faculty.”

The Mirapoint-Blackboard ASP partnership provides a full featured professional email and calendar system – for both students and faculty – that students have come to expect as part of their education experience. This new offering allows academic institutions to maintain ownership of messages and control of data storage, and is free of advertising. Additionally, the offering provides 24x7 email appliance and network management by an experienced professional hosting team that guarantees availability service level agreements.

“As opportunities for e-Learning continue to grow, Blackboard technology is providing new ways for faculty and students to teach and learn, as well as more effectively communicate and collaborate,” said Barry Ariko, chief executive officer for Mirapoint. “We are pleased to work with Blackboard to provide a secure, scalable email solution that offers all members of the education community a great deal of flexibility without having to maintain or manage the system.”

The Mirapoint-Blackboard hosted email solution offers single sign-on with the Blackboard Academic Suite™. The Blackboard Academic Suite is used by millions of people to access course materials and collaborate with peers and faculty online. Nearly 450 clients have their Blackboard e-Learning programs hosted by Blackboard.
 
“As institutions of higher education strive to keep pace with emerging technologies, they also face the challenge of doing more with less. Traditional messaging solutions used by most businesses are complex, often with high management costs and reliability issues,” said Michael Chasen, Blackboard president and chief executive officer. “We think this new solution provides a tremendous value to our clients, enabling them to focus their attention on teaching and learning.”