Countrywide Financial selects AXS-One e-mail archive platform for operation storage management

AXS-One Inc, a leading provider of e-business solutions, today announced it has signed a contract with Countrywide Financial Corporation, a member of the Fortune 500 and a leading global financial services company, to enhance operational storage management of the company`s electronic communication infrastructure. The licence agreement is for 35 000 mailboxes and was signed in the fourth quarter of 2003.

Under the terms of the agreement, Countrywide will use the AXS-OneAE Email Solution for operational e-mail storage management as its corporate e-mail archive standard. The AXS-One solution will help support and streamline the company`s infrastructure operations and access to corporate-wide information. Implementation began in early December 2003. The decision to select AXS-One was made after competitive side-by-side pilot implementations involving several leading vendors.

"We don`t have data silos at Countrywide, therefore the chosen solution had to allow us to archive the company`s e-mails in one location for efficient storage and easy retrieval," said Richard Jones, Chief Technology Officer at Countrywide Financial Corporation. "We put several top-rated archival solutions from some of the industry`s largest vendors through a rigorous testing process, and we selected the AXS-One Email Management Platform on the merits of its overall performance, flexibility and scalability."

AXS-One`s archive serves as a transparent operational storage management software platform at Countrywide and manages Lotus Notes e-mail documents, Countrywide`s corporate e-mail solution. The archive`s policy engine automatically stores e-mail from corporate e-mail servers based on administrators` existing policies, and e-mails remain 100% accessible to end-users at all times. The e-mail archival storage system from AXS-One utilises EMC`s Centera Compliance Edition Content Addressed Storage (CAS) so that digital content will remain completely secure at Countrywide.

The AXS-One solution will help Countrywide reduce its capital and operational expenses incurred by the exploding use of e-mail. It also enhances the company`s ability to execute core business communications initiatives, including increasing storage utilisation, full-text indexing of e-mail attachments, advanced searching capabilities, retrieval of data, regulatory compliance, legal discovery and integration with other key systems.

"An ever-increasing percentage of corporate knowledge, intellectual property and legal information is stored within e-mail systems, organisations such as Countrywide require a scalable, platform approach to effectively manage e-mail communications for operational efficiency, legal and regulatory compliance purposes," said John Rade, Chief Executive Officer of AXS-One Inc.

Rade continued: "AXS-One`s solution delivers operational storage management, as a component of a complete digital archival and business process management platform. Unlike the many point solutions that are available today, the AXS-One solution is highly flexible and scalable, making it very attractive from a total cost of ownership (TCO) perspective. An e-mail archive solution may serve one business function today, such as archiving e-mails to reduce the load on e-mail servers, but companies may need it for an entirely different reason a year from now, when they launch their Sarbanes-Oxley initiatives, for instance. They should not have to, nor do they expect to, find another software application."

Countrywide executives will share their views of the selection process and their implementation experience in the AXS-One and EMC hospitality suite at Lotusphere 2004, taking place from 25 to 29 January at The Walt Disney World Resort. Visit http://www.axsone.com/events_trade.shtml or contact AXS-One for further details.