America’s First Direct-From-Manufacturer Network Company Acquires Email Archiving Leader

Amer.com's new website. Amer.com acquired freedom9 Inc. in a friendly merger.Amer.com Acquires freedom9 Inc. As First Step in Growth Plans

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — Two trend-setting companies, both niche leaders, announced a friendly acquisition merger today. Amer.com’s CEO Wai Lee announced the acquisition of freedom9.

“As part of our growth initiative, we are acquiring various companies that compliment our leadership position in direct-from-manufacturer network products sales,” said Mr. Lee. “Our first acquisition target was obvious. With the growing importance of E-mail Archiving and E-Discovery law, freedom9 was our number one target.”

Amer.com is a leader in direct-to-schools and institutions with over 6000 accounts in the United States. Wai Lee, who heads up Amer.com was a major industry name in networking after his success launching D-Link in Canada and growing it to a major brand force. “The time was right to acquire freedom9," said Mr. Lee. "We’ve sold their products for years, and remained impressed with their leadership in network security. But freedom9 Inc is only the first of many planned acquisitions and product lines.”

Although Mr. Lee was a shareholder in freedom9 Inc from the beginning, the younger company is headed by CEO Scott Barrett, a well-known leader in network products, who also helped grow D-Link in Canada. “I’ve known Wai for many years,” said Mr. Barrett. “Wai and I brought D-Link into Canada and helped make it a major force. Later, we both invested in two companies that are on course to dominate their niches—Amer.com in networks, and freedom9 in security and E-mail Archiving and Internet Recording.”

Combined Mission

“Our combined mission is connectivity,” said Mr. Lee, CEO of Amer.com. “Technology is really all about connecting people, businesses, and institutions. A computer is nothing if it’s not connected to the internet and other computers. With the growth of security issues and liabilities for companies and institutions, E-mail Archiving is a vital growth area for Amer.com.”

Amer.com, founded twelve years ago, grew rapidly to preeminence in America for State Education contracts in network products. The company mission includes acquisitions of companies, resources and new technologies related to connectivity that will help grow their dominance in the broader connectivity industry. Mr. Lee indicated Amer.com plans to bring in exclusive and branded lines of connectivity products and peripherals to service their existing and new accounts in the United States.

New Acquisitions

Other important company acquisitions and product line additions will include storage products, security products, wireless, printers, supplies, even important accessories and cables—anything related to networking, security and connectivity.

“Increased product choices, complete network and security solutions and ongoing support of our growing client base are important to our strategy,” said freedom9‘s CEO Mr. Barrett. “And freedom9 Inc made sense for Amer.com. While Amer.com is big in the education market in America, especially in direct-from-manufacturer, freedom9 has major momentum for network security solutions in multiple verticals in all three key North American markets.”

Co-CEOs and Acquisition

As part of the acquisition agreement, Wai Lee and Scott Barrett will be Co-CEOs of the new combined company. “freedom9 will remain as a brand within security and E-Mail Archiving,” said Co-CEO Mr. Barrett. “But Amer.com will service our combined clients plus new markets such as healthcare, automotive, and aeronautic, with a special focus on small to mid-sized corporations.”

Mr. Barrett also pointed out that the loyal teams of both companies will be merged into dynamic groups in their areas of expertise, offering more support and service to clients and faster growth. “The shared resources of these two companies is significant in both the United States and Canada. And we will be watching for other growing companies we can acquire or partner with to add capabilities our clients seek.”

New Marketing and Interactive Web Initiatives

As part of the ambitious growth plans, new websites for bothwww.amer.comandwww.freedom9.comwere launched to coincide with the first acquisition. New product lines and announcements will be made regularly. Interactive initiatives including blog-marketing, podcasting and social marketing will play a major role.

Marketing of the combined companies will be headed up by Derek Armstrong, known as the inventor of Image Marketing, author of popular bookThe Persona Principleand co-creator of Blogertize. Mr. Armstrong was described byProfitmagazine as “a savvy marketing leader who brings the science.”

Emerging Vendor of the Year

Under Mr. Barrett’s leadership, freedom9 was named “Emerging Vendor of the Year in 2007 byComputer Reseller News. The company was one of the first to recognize the vital importance of E-Mail Archiving and Internet Recording. “E-Discovery law and new regulations make it virtually mandatory now,” said Mr. Barrett, pointing to a number of case studies on their website atwww.freedom9.com. “It’s critical to any company to deploy an Internet Recording solution.”

“I’m delighted to be working so closely with Mr. Barrett again,” said Wai Lee. “Time and again he has proven his insight in finding new opportunities and technologies.”

Wai Lee and Scott Barrett brought D-Link into Canada, with Wai as CEO and Scott Barrett as Vice President of Sales. Toron Lee, with Amer.com, also worked to grow D-Link in Operations and Marketing.

Canadian Dealer News (CDN) Profiles freedom9

Freedom9 looks to secure the channel

Network security solutions company is seeking out new reseller partners
6/15/2009 9:50:00 AMBy: Maxine Cheung

Freedom9, a Canadian-based global network security solutions company, is looking to expand its North American channel base by establishing long-term relationships with each new reseller who joins.

Scott Barrett, president and CEO of Freedom 9, says his Mississauga, Ont.-based company specializes in e-mail archiving and Internet content recording solutions for use in the education, healthcare, government and small to medium-sized enterprise markets. The solutions are primarily used for compliance,eDiscovery and litigation purposes, as well as legal cases. In addition, the company also offers bandwidth management and IT asset management solutions.

The company is entirely channel-led with over 600 resellers across North America and growing. Read More on CDN>> Copyright IT World Canada.

Freedom 9 Mentioned As "Specialists" in Email Archivers in Compliance Media Feature

By Correspondent Derek Armstrong

REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION OF SECURE NET NEWS

Email is arguably the most important single tool of nearly every business, from highly secure military applications, to sensitive mission critical communications at hospitals, to a mom and pop shop with two computers. Email Archiving is no longer just a matter of common sense. It's required.

Common Sense
Email archiving has become common sense in a world dominated by email communications. Everything from e-ordering to public relations, to medical files flying back and forth on the internet on secure and not-so-secure routes, and emails carrying attachments, opinions, legal arguments, mission-critical time-flows, software code, critical images and — not so wholesome, the inevitable office romances, abusive emails and lots of spam — flies by the trillions of bits per minute across the internet.

Compliance
Mission critical organizations may already be mandated to comply with rules and regulations that compel them to record email messages and information, and often even internet visits, traffic and destinations. The reasons are clear.

Liability with a capital L
It’s scary out there. With million dollar lawsuits for email abuse. Employees fired because of their internet activities. Secrets lost. Productivity costs due to over use of the internet by employees for their own personal needs.

Practical Implementation
From a practical point of view, simple capacity management is a good reason for implementing email archiving and internet recording in almost any size enterprise or institutions. Reducing storage demands for email systems can be a big resource savings.

Compliance Needs
Laws mandate compliance with new rules in email archiving and even internet recording to allow for legal discovery and comply with FRCP rules or even the Freedom of Information Act. Laws include:
• Sarbanes-Oxley
• HIPAA
• SEC
Many other laws require a common sense approach to information management including robust email archiving.

The Realities of Email Archiving
Without a functioning appliance specifically designed to email archive, no company would have the resources necessary to monitor and record emails sufficiently to protect against possible liability or productivity loss. Although typically viewed as a “big ticket” investment, there are many low cost appliances with vast capacities available for any size institution or enterprise. freedom9 is one company that specializes in email archivers combined with internet recording (including the risky employee Instant Messaging) at a very low cost to functionality ratio. Barracuda is known as the classic middle-cost choice. For most enterprises there’s not much need to go to bigger appliances in the heady price range of automobiles.

Tactical Deployment of Email Archiving

Start by Removing Dead Data Before Your First Major Archive
Resources will be strained if you try to archive “straight up” without a quick go through to remove the staggering debris that gathers up in any company IT infrastructure. Take the time to plan, to clean and to purge.

Worry About Today, But Think About Tomorrow
Capacity is not just about now. Most companies and institutions find their email messaging grows at exponential rates. Assume you will need to grow capacity 50 percent per year or more to avoid costly re-implementation in the future.

Develop Policies
Minimize administration to maximize security and improve access. Once you implement a good email archiving appliance. Since email archiving provides searching functionality and immense retention capabilities, most companies can develop policies that will reduce infrastructure needs and costs to a manageable level. Always consult with you legal counsel before implementing a final policy.

Implementation Considerations
Email archiving and internet recording will always create requirements for typical IT issues such as desktop updates, software and sometimes additional hardware to be installed and maintained. Make a tick list of all the requirements, including storage, updates and equipment.

Phase in a Solution
For larger implementations consider managing your needs in phases, either department by department or unit by unit. A pilot test may also be an important step to a seamless transition. .

Test, Test, Test…
Test the recording and the recovery of archived emails before a wide implementation. You may be backing up a decade of emails, which can be resource intense. Test first!

It’s important to understand that archived emails will take more time to recover than server-stored emails. Remember also that millions of emails (if you are doing a retroactive archive) can take a long time to archive and require vast resources. Consider a go-forward approach initially.

Back up the Archive
This may seem counter-intuitive, but it is important to back up your archive. Multiple backups are always a good idea, build around a proper disaster recovery plan. This means a separate location for the backup.

Freedom 9 and Partner Caveo Profiled in Channel Magazine in Mexico

This is a translation of the freedom9 / Caveo profile appearing in Channel Magazine in Mexico.

Freedom9 arrives at Mexico of the hand of Caveo Networks Specialized in security of networks, the company Freedom9 has the objective to extend its presence in Latin America, for which takes as starting point to Mexico, key territory to comply happiness goal, in which will include the aid of Caveo Networks like its authorized wholesale only distributor in the country.

"Our proposal of business turns out to be suitable, since we are a complement to infrastructure of security already installed and, as opposed to other companies dedicated to the monitoring of networks, we arrive more in depth and we deliver functionalities extra to a competitive price", affirms John Ricketts, vice president of World Sales in Freedom9.

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93% of freedom9 Customers Satisfied with Customer Service

Freedom9 Technical Support Exceeds Users Expectations

Ongoing efforts to lead in customer service makes freedom9's quarterly customer service and technical support survey our most important measure of success. In industry-leading form, 80% of support tickets were resolved on the first call in the first quarter of 2009.

freedom9 customers demonstrated their satisfaction by voting on the performance. A full 20% of customers who created a ticket, elected to respond to the customer satisfaction survey.

Survey results for Q1 were as follows:

• 98% of customers believe our technical support representatives are friendly and patient.
• 96% of customers agreed our technical support representatives were competent and able to provide a solution.
• 90% of customers agree freedom9 provides quality products.
• 91% of customers would recommend freedom9 products.
• 93% of customers were satisfied with freedom9 customer service.

Mail Import Feature Added to freeGuard Capture

Freedom9 enabled the freeGuard Capture to import mail from various file types. Now Microsoft Outlook PST, Outlook Express DBX, and Thunderbird, MBX file types can be imported and archived with ease.

Environments with unmanaged email can sort and archive. freedom9 continues to add new features to the freeGuard Capture, making it one of the most popular solutions available in the value range.

freedom9 enhanced its popular freeGuard Capture Appliance, with the addition of Skype.

As a major and growing business tool Skype offers encrypted chat and voice conversations via the Internet free of charge. Now, the freeGuard Capture Appliance exploits this major advantage, making the companies most popular solution even more enticing.

The freedom9 update allows the freeGuard Capture to record this encrypted communication by means of a plug-in installed on the workstation.

Rocky Hill Public Schools Reduce Server Downtime

Rocky Hill Public Schools reduce server downtime with the freedom9 freeView Power 80

With four large schools and over 2,500 students located across the town, the Rocky Hill Public School IT department had a tough time keeping on top of everything. The high school alone features an interdisciplinary computer lab, a technology education computer lab, two business computer labs and an art computer lab, no small feat for any IT department to keep in fully working condition.

Bradley County Schools Deploy Freedom 9 Solution

Bradley County Schools comply with new court ruling on electronic communications by using the freedom9 freeGuard Capture 2000

Back in December of 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that schools, businesses, and other organizations are required to capture and maintain records on all forms of electronic communication produced by their employees. The Bradley County Schools technology department was tasked to source out a solution to ensure that their entire organization be compliant with this new ruling.

The Freedom to Succeed. About Freedom 9

Freedom9 brings you the freedom to succeed with network security solutions. Our goal is to provide you with a value priced product of great quality that will improve productivity and reduce costs. At freedom9, we want you to succeed, and we will spend time with you to understand your needs and budgets, assist you in selecting the right products for your environment, and support you after the sale is done. You can look to freedom9 for network security products and solutions.

Freedom9 has corporate offices in North America, Asia and Australia.

Value Proposition:

• Value priced products of great quality

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