BOXBOROUGH, Mass. – January 12, 2009 – Crossbeam Systems, Inc., the leading provider of next-generation security platforms for high-performance networks, today announced that 2008 was its most successful year to date, having realized year over year growth of 56 percent. A number of factors contributed to making 2008 a milestone year for Crossbeam, including the company’s global expansion, significant partner and product developments, record sales and profitability, and the continued industry leadership of its X-Series network security platform.

“We’re very pleased with the progress made in 2008 as evidenced by our operating results for the year,” said Pete Fiore, president and CEO of Crossbeam. “Our investments in expanding our global distribution capacity, the introduction of innovative new products and technology, and our deep strategic partnerships with the best security companies in the world have created a strong foundation for growth in the coming year. Moreover, we have established ourselves as the leading best-of-breed security platform among large enterprises, carriers and managed service providers. We’ll continue to make investments to extend our technology leadership and deliver superior customer value.”

Crossbeam continued to grow its customer base in 2008 with 49 new deployments, including Baylor University, Bouygues Telecom, Celcom Malaysia, Del Monte Foods, John Hancock Financial, Schneider International, Temple University, T-Mobile and U.S. Bancorp. Temple University identified Crossbeam as the only vendor who supported best-of-breed security applications at the 10-Gigabit speeds they required.

2008 also showed a continued expansion of Crossbeam deployments at existing customers such as AT&T, BT, CheckFree, now part of Fiserv, Fujitsu, CIBC, Cox Communications, Ecritel, Federal Express, Library of Congress, Novartis, Orange UK, Queensland Police Department, Telefónica and Vodafone Italia. Cox Communications evaluated Crossbeam as the hands-down best performer with more than double the throughput rates of its closest competitor.

According to Bob Davies, technical services manager of BT Operate, “Crossbeam has allowed us to easily facilitate delivery of virtualized firewall services and avoid appliance sprawl.  We slashed the hardware and licensing costs plus all the expenses related to maintenance, support, power and space in our data centers that would otherwise have resulted from a traditional deployment model. Crossbeam has enabled us to re-design and simplify our network, while improving security for us and our customers.”

Notable 2008 achievements include:

• Continued global expansion – Worldwide demand for the X-Series platform fueled Crossbeam’s expansion into Asia-Pacific and Latin America in 2008. Crossbeam opened offices in Japan and Brazil and hired on-the-ground leadership and expertise from industry veterans Mike Mizumoto in Japan and Rogerio de Campos Morais in Brazil to head up operations and work with leading security partners and distributors to expand the business. Crossbeam also saw a significant increase in its business in China, where the X-Series platform recently won the 2008 Editors’ Choice award from China Information World, one of the leading IT publications.
• Released the latest version of Crossbeam’s XOS™ operating system – Crossbeam released version 8.1 of its open secure operating system. XOS 8.1 delivered an unparalleled feature set including Crossbeam’s patent-pending secure flow processing capability – the ability to sequence IP or Ethernet traffic flows from one third-party security application to another running on the same Crossbeam chassis.
• Introduced highest performance network IPS with IBM – Crossbeam and IBM partnered to introduce the IBM Proventia Network IPS for Crossbeam, an integrated virtualized security solution that enables service providers to launch a new generation of “in-the-cloud” network IPS security services. It also enables enterprises to protect their networks with unprecedented scalability and resiliency.
  

  In tests conducted by Opus One, the IBM Proventia Network IPS running on Crossbeam delivered the industry’s highest-performing network IPS, capable of reaching 40 Gbps of inspection throughput while maintaining the strongest protection under real-world conditions.

  “In-the-cloud services offer a much more cost-effective and scalable way to deliver security,” said Chet Gapinski, vice president of engineering for Crossbeam. “Crossbeam is now the only security platform provider that can virtualize both the IBM Proventia Network IPS and Check Point VSX firewall in these high-performance environments – making it possible for carriers to offer multiple, best-of-breed security services via their network cloud. Our ability to do this at superior performance levels is one of the key reasons we’ve seen such growth in the carrier market.”

• Introduced Secure Web Gateway Security Solution with Trend Micro – Crossbeam and Trend Micro introduced a joint solution to deliver one of the highest performance email security solutions on the market. In tests conducted by Opus One, the Trend Micro InterScan Messaging Security Suite running on the Crossbeam’s X-Series demonstrated superior performance and proved that it can handle email loads of the world’s largest enterprises, providing the ability to process up to 140 million email messages a day
• Continued to dominate the high-end network security market – IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Security Appliance Tracker for Q3 2008 showed that Crossbeam dominated the high-end Unified Threat Management (UTM) market with its X-Series Next Generation Security Platform. This marks the 15th consecutive quarter that Crossbeam has led this category, which includes products that cost at least $50,000.
  

  Crossbeam is the only security platform on the market that can provide the consolidation benefits of a UTM product, while offering customers their choice of best-of-breed security applications. Additionally, Crossbeam takes UTM to the level by providing the virtualization and superior performance levels that can only be achieved on the X-Series to enable large enterprises and carriers to easily and cost-effectively scale their security infrastructure as requirements change.

• Increased investment in partners – Crossbeam continues to invest heavily in developing its distribution channel and partnerships with leading security companies. In 2008, the company introduced a new worldwide partner program to engage more strategically with its channel. Crossbeam also successfully certified applications from Check Point, Imperva, Sourcefire and Trend Micro through its iBeam ISV Certification Program, which ensures customers that the best-of-breed security applications they want to deploy on the X-Series have been thoroughly tested and proven to work together in large, multi-vendor network environments.

  
  

  “As security threats continue to grow in volume and sophistication, we expect spending on network security to be a priority in 2009, despite economic challenges,” said Fiore. “Advances in security virtualization and outsourced security services technology are enabling security and network staff to intelligently grow their security infrastructure, while reducing costs, management complexity and their carbon footprint. These are all areas where Crossbeam is leading the way.”

 

About Crossbeam
Crossbeam Systems, Inc. transforms the way enterprises, service providers and government agencies architect and deliver security services. The basis of Crossbeam’s solution is its Next Generation Security Platform, a highly scalable software and hardware platform that facilitates the consolidation, virtualization and simplification of security services delivery, while preserving the customers’ choice of best-of-breed security applications. Crossbeam offers the only security platform that delivers unparalleled network performance, scalability, adaptability and resiliency. Customers choose Crossbeam to intelligently manage risk, accelerate and maintain compliance, and protect their businesses from evolving threats. Crossbeam is headquartered in Boxborough, Mass., and has offices in Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America. More information is available at: www.crossbeam.com.

 

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Crossbeam Systems and Crossbeam are registered trademarks of Crossbeam Systems, Inc. All other company, product or service names not owned by Crossbeam mentioned in this press release are the property of their respective owners.

Contact:
Sharon Dratch
Davies Murphy Group
(781) 418-2425
crossbeam@daviesmurphy.com
http://www.daviesmurphy.com