SWsoft Acquires Plesk and Confixx to Create Global Hosting Software Powerhouse [9th June 2003]

HERNDON, VA, Jun. 09, 2003 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) -- SWsoft, a leader in hosting automation and enterprise server software, today announced it has acquired Plesk, Inc. and Yippi-Yeah! E-Business, GmbH (Confixx software developer), two of the world's largest providers of software to the hosting industry. The acquisition makes SWsoft the leader with over 30 thousand servers deployed to support the three million businesses currently using the combined companies' hosting products that manage corporate web sites, email servers, and file servers. The products include Plesk Server Administrator (PSA) control panels, Confixx control panels, Virtuozzo virtual private servers and HSPcomplete hosting automation solutions.

The union creates a global software powerhouse with over 3,000 major hosting provider customers in over 100 countries, including 8 of the top 10 US providers and 3 of the top 5 European providers. The hosting providers serve as sales channels and support more than 3 million businesses in their Internet use. Hosting companies providing these solutions include Interland, Affinity, Catalog.com, CI Host, Datapipe, DellHost, Rackshack, Rackspace, intergenia (Server4Free/PlusServer) and 1 & 1 Internet.

Plesk, Inc., based in the US telecommunications hub of Herndon, VA, and best known for its market leading Plesk Server Administrator (PSA), will expand its offices to accommodate the new global corporate headquarters. Yippi-Yeah E-Business, GmbH, based in Bremen, Germany and developers of the most popular hosting software in Europe, will serve as the European headquarters, as SWsoft Europe. SWsoft, the leader in hosting automation and OS virtualization will convert its current San Francisco offices into the company's US west coast sales and services branch.

"Of the $9.1 billion US hosting market in 2003, the mass market segment served by solutions from Plesk, Confixx and SWsoft we estimate to be about $3.8 billion," said Joshua Beil, vice president of Tier 1 Research, a leading industry analyst firm covering the Internet infrastructure market. "We see this acquisition establishing SWsoft as the leader in providing hosting software solutions, in terms of total number of control panel licenses."

"This is a big win for our customers. We've now got the best team in the industry to provide support and services globally," said SWsoft CEO and founder Serguei Beloussov. "Our customers can be confident in getting long-term service and support across the most complete product line in the hosting software market."

"There is a great deal of synergy between these two firms. Plesk's expertise in hosting automation software coupled with SWsoft's Virtual Private Server expertise brings compelling value to both hosting providers and to our customers," said John Lally, director of product management for Interland, the leading provider of Web hosting and online services for small and medium businesses.

With the acquisition, Plesk CEO Dmitri Simonenko will assume the new role of executive vice president of SWsoft, leading the company's worldwide operations, sales and marketing. "With Plesk and Yippi-Yeah!, SWsoft becomes a true global leader with the most complete and integrated product line," stated Simonenko. "SWsoft's HSPcomplete hosting automation solution already integrates PSA and Confixx Professional under a single framework. Yippi-Yeah! resellers and partners across Europe and Plesk partners throughout the rest of the world already sell SWsoft products."

The SWsoft product family will now include:

- Plesk Server Administrator, the most mature and widely used
control panel for dedicated servers.
- Virtuozzo, the only true VPS and the most mature and efficient
technology for virtual private servers, capable of supporting
hundreds of Web sites on a single server in separate virtual
environments.
- Confixx Professional, the most widely used hosting software in
Europe
- HSPcomplete, the most feature-rich hosting automation solution
on the market. HSPcomplete future releases will inherit the key
advantages of Plesk's Enterprise Manager (PEM) application and
system architecture.

"We see this as an excellent opportunity to provide the best hosting automation products available to our customers," said Oliver Brandl, CEO of Yippi-Yeah! E-Business GmbH. "This acquisition allows our customers to receive additional products, faster and with many more features, as well as being able to provide customers with a complete solution under one roof with PSA, Virtuozzo and Confixx."

SWsoft will also use its stronghold in the hosting automation and hosting data center virtualization space to expand into enterprise data center market, with Virtuozzo for server consolidation and PEM for corporate datacenter automation for both Linux and Windows servers.

About SWsoft

SWsoft, a private company based in Virginia, is the world leader in hosting software solutions with more than 3,000 customers providing hosting services to over three million businesses in 100 countries. Providing advanced server and networking software technology, the company offers global support and services and patent-pending Virtuozzo(TM) technology with end-to-end solutions and services for hosting service providers such as Internet data centers, application service providers, managed hosting providers and Web hosters. SWsoft's products deliver powerful, comprehensive solutions that can help data centers automate management, accelerate operations and provide excellent return on investments. For more information about SWsoft, please visit www.sw-soft.com.

Angela Granlund
SWsoft
916-630-0390