FaceTime Partners With Edvance to Secure IM and P2P Communications in Asia

FaceTime Partners With Edvance to Secure IM and P2P Communications in Asia FaceTime Increases Leadership in Asia Pacific; Announces Immediate Availability of RTG500, the Industry's First Appliance for Secure IM and P2P HONG KONG and FOSTER CITY, Calif., Jan. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- FaceTime Communications, the leading provider of solutions that secure, manage, and extend instant messaging (IM) and peer-to-peer (P2P) applications, and Edvance Limited, the premier provider of secure Internet communications solutions in Asia, today announced a reseller partnership in which the Hong Kong-based integrated solutions vendor will resell the entire FaceTime product line including the immediate availability of FaceTime RTG500, an industry-first network appliance built for the ease of adoption and safe, secure use of IM and P2P in the enterprise, small and medium businesses, ISPs, government organizations, universities and schools. The announcement expands FaceTime's leadership position in the Asia Pacific region where customers' widespread use of IM and P2P has driven an increasing market demand for best-of-breed solutions. "Illegal sharing of movies and music using P2P software such as BitTorrent has caused losses to the film and music industry which run into the millions of dollars. Those downloading these files on the corporate or university network exposes these organizations to possible copyright infringement. Furthermore, unauthorized IM usage in the workplace reduces employee productivity as reported in a recent study published by the Hong Kong Productivity Council. "An effective solution is needed to allow organizations to control and secure IM and P2P activities on their network," said Ashley Lo, Technology Director of Edvance Limited. "We are very pleased to be partnering with FaceTime. FaceTime's industry leading technology helps to make IM more useful by eliminating rogue IM and P2P use in a very simplified way." "IM and P2P communications have no territorial boundaries," said Kailash Ambwani, president and CEO of FaceTime Communications. "FaceTime is pleased to partner with Edvance to address the increasing need to securely manage IM and P2P usage globally throughout all types of organizations. With Edvance, FaceTime further expands its leadership in Asia Pacific with increased distribution from Hong Kong." FaceTime's RTG500 is the industry's first appliance launched to effectively monitor and block IM and P2P traffic, decreasing the risk associated with virus spread, disclosure of confidential or inappropriate information and copyright infringement. RTG500 is a purpose-built, hardened network device that is easy to install, requires minimal IT administration resources and has no impact on network performance. Deployed in the DMZ, RTG500 is an enterprise security gateway that controls rogue IM and P2P filesharing usage and runs on a hardened Linux operating system. The appliance delivers complete, non-stop protection from unauthorized IM connections such as ICQ, MSN and Yahoo Messenger, while also eliminating common P2P file sharing connections such as BitTorrent, KaZaA, Grokster and WinMx. These applications decrease employee productivity, drain network performance, render organizations liable for copyright infringement and expose children to online exploitation. With this announcement, Edvance will also make immediately available FaceTime's complete line of products including the award-winning IM Auditor. FaceTime IM Auditor is the leading IM management solution that enables enterprises to control, manage and log IM activities. IM Auditor protects organizations from viruses and IM Spam -- SPIM -- with its patent-pending challenge-response mechanism combined with sophisticated content filtering to effectively block SPIM (such as the "Osama Found" adware that affected AIM users). IM Auditor does not require additional IT administration and integrates seamlessly with enterprise IM solutions such as Microsoft LCS 2005, Lotus Sametime, Reuters Messaging, Bloomberg and others. FaceTime solutions offer a unique 'defense-in-depth' approach managing IM usage from both user and application behavior. About Edvance Edvance Limited is one of Hong Kong's premier providers of Secure Internet Communications Solutions and Technology Consultancy Services in the region. Edvance's security solutions include Enterprise Email Security Solutions from Tumbleweed Communications and leading IM & P2P Security solutions from FaceTime Communications. In addition, Edvance is also a premier technology integrator for Microsoft solutions in the enterprise and is recognized as one of the top .NET solutions provider in Hong Kong. For more information please visit ( http://www.edvance.com.hk/ ). About FaceTime Communications Founded in 1998, FaceTime Communications is the leading provider of extensible real-time security and management solutions that address network and information security, regulatory and corporate compliance, and call center customer service. FaceTime's award-winning solutions are used by over 400 customers, with over 50 percent of the largest global 100 financial institutions, including seven of the eight largest U.S. banks. Hundreds of customers worldwide, including Chicago Stock Exchange, Dominion Energy, NCR, Southern Company, Standard Bank London, Thomas Weisel Partners, USAS Technologies and Wachovia Securities among others rely on FaceTime solutions. FaceTime has strategic partnerships with all leading public and private IM network providers, including AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo!, IBM, Bloomberg, Jabber and Reuters. FaceTime is headquartered in Foster City, California. For more information visit ( http://www.facetime.com/ ) or call 888-349-FACE. NOTE: FaceTime is a registered trademark of FaceTime Communications, Inc. The FaceTime logo, IM Auditor, IM Director, RTGuardian, RTG, RTMatrix, and RTMonitor are trademarks of FaceTime Communications Inc. All other trademarks are the intellectual property of their respective owners. For More Information, Contact: Jon Lavietes MSR Communications for FaceTime 415-447-6115 jon@msrcommunications.com Wendy Wan/Sarah Lee Cool Factory for Edvance 852-2851-7063/852-2851-7031 wendy.wan@coolfactory.com.hk/sarah.lee@coolfactory.com.hk Source: FaceTime Communications CONTACT: Jon Lavietes of MSR Communications, +1-415-447-6115, or jon@msrcommunications.com for FaceTime; or Wendy Wan/Sarah Lee of Cool Factory, +1-852-2851-7063/+1-852-2851-7031, or wendy.wan@coolfactory.com.hk/sarah.lee@coolfactory.com.hk, for Edvance Web site: http://www.edvance.com.hk/ Web site: http://www.facetime.com/ ------- Profile: International Entertainment