FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Admin2001 Booth #46

U.S. Census Bureau Selects Big Sky's
Remark! Unified MessagingAssistant as Their Next Generation
Unified Messaging Platform

Suitland, MD, April 4, 2001 -- The United States Bureau of the Census (BOC), the data collection arm of the U.S. Department of Commerce, has chosen Big Sky's Remark! Unified MessagingAssistant™ and MESSAGEmanager Domino Fax™ as the Lotus Notes™ and Domino™ based solution most suited to meet their telephony integrated messaging needs for the new millennium.

"The BOC knew it was time to move away from their legacy Octel™ voice mail system to a unified messaging solution," said Ed O'Toole Director of Sales, Big Sky Technologies. "Having a Lotus Notes e-mail environment, they reviewed all of the available product offerings. After an extensive comparison and pilot of competitive unified messaging solutions, they selected Big Sky's Remark! Unified MessagingAssistant. Among the many requirements that were factored into their decision making process, two key requirements were to implement a solution which used a single, integrated directory and to have no additional software or licensing requirement for the 6,000 desktops they support. Additionally, BOC is in a pilot evaluation of Cisco's™ Call Manager™ VoIP solution and Big Sky's ability to integrate Remark! with Cisco's VoIP product was validated. This further solidified the decision to deploy Remark! Unified MessagingAssistant as the product of choice. Close examination was also made of the installed base for Remark! unified messaging solutions within the Lotus Notes community. Big Sky came out on top in all categories and was able to provide references for Lotus Notes unified messaging customers dating back to 1996."

"We worked with the BOC's Network, Telecommunications and Lotus Notes engineering teams to design a system implementation that would provide their users with the system reliability they have come to expect", said Tom Krier, CTO at Big Sky. "Running on a cluster of Compaq™ 8500 Proliant™ servers our team designed a high-availability solution on par with that of the legacy Octel system being replaced."

"This implementation for a user community of 6,000 makes the Bureau of the Census the largest fully integrated Lotus Notes-based unified messaging solution in North America," said Bill Doll president and CEO of Big Sky. "Prior to the BOC installation that distinction was held by Big Sky's customer, General Dynamics/Electric Boat Division, with their user base of 5,000 users. Once again, the Big Sky solution of Remark! Unified MessagingAssistant and MESSAGEmanager Domino Fax proves to be the superior unified messaging solution for Lotus Notes and Domino".

CONTACT:
Nicole Paolini
MARCOM Manager
Big Sky Technologies, Inc.
Ph: 858-715-5036
Fax: 858-715-5066
e-mail: npaolini@bigskytech.com

About Big Sky Technologies
San Diego-based Big Sky Technologies was founded in 1994 and is a privately held California corporation. The company is a leading supplier of solutions that integrate the telephone and voice with Lotus Notes and Domino for both the corporate data network and Internet. Big Sky provides a broad range of unified messaging and workgroup IVR solutions to enhance communications and collaboration within the workgroup and enterprise. For more information, please visit www.bigskytech.com.

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