Aberdeen Report Reveals Best-In-Class Enterprises Leverage Managed Network Services to Improve Performance and Reduce Costs

DENVER, June 17, 2008 - Virtela, the global network solutions company, today announced the availability of a new research report on the use of managed network services by the Aberdeen Group, a Harte Hanks Company (NYSE: HHS). The study found that best-in-class companies experienced an 88% average jump in application availability, a 30% average cost savings and all improved application response times for business critical applications by using managed network services.

"Network and application performance management is becoming a complex and urgent challenge, and organizations need solutions that resolve these issues while keeping operational costs to a minimum," said Bojan Simic, Aberdeen research analyst. "Our research shows that outsourcing network management can achieve these goals, providing enormous benefits to enterprises by optimizing performance while reducing costs and freeing up internal IT resources for more strategic initiatives."

The study, based on a survey of 140 enterprises, found that 94% of Best-in-Class organizations are satisfied with the managed network services that they are using compared to Laggards. All Best-in-Class companies reported decreased Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) for network performance issues, for example, enabling them to mitigate revenue losses associated with network downtime and more effectively support their business processes*. Eighty-nine percent of these companies decreased unplanned network downtime and 82% improved their level of SLA achievements by using a managed network approach.

"This research demonstrates the growing demand for managed services as companies feel the pressure to adapt to rapidly-changing technology and globalization requirements," said Virtela CEO Steve King. "Virtela's expertise and services set is unique in its ability to address these network performance management issues for multinational businesses of all sizes. Our innovative Network as a Service approach is helping companies - whether they have three sites or three thousand - to meet these challenges head on."

The Aberdeen report, sponsored in part by Virtela, found that the top challenges leading companies to use managed network services are a need to reduce operational costs, a lack of IT resources within the company, and general complexity of network management. To arrive at the application, network and MTTR benefits cited above, best-in-class companies were more likely to leverage WAN acceleration tools and integrated portals for network monitoring. To help its customers achieve this leadership distinction, Virtela offers its Accelerated WAN Service, which improves application and protocol performance over the WAN by a factor of two to three times on average, and the VirtelaView customer portal for complete visibility into network performance, health and security.

To illustrate the successful use of managed network services, Aberdeen's research summary also includes a case study of Virtela customer Sensata Technologies, highlighting results achieved using Virtela's managed WAN acceleration service.

For a complimentary copy of the report, "Managed Network Services: Beyond Cost Savings and Uptime" please visit: http://www.virtela.com/whitepaper_details.aspx?ID=28

Aberdeen's recent report "The Real Value of Network Visibility" revealed that, on average, organizations lose $69,000 for each minute of network downtime.

About Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company

Aberdeen isa leading provider of fact-based research and market intelligence that delivers demonstrable results. Having benchmarked more than 30,000 companies in the past two years, Aberdeen is uniquely positioned to educate users to action: driving market awareness, creating demand, enabling sales, and delivering meaningful return-on-investment analysis. As the trusted advisor to the global technology markets, corporations turn to AberdeenTM for insights that drive decisions.

As a Harte-Hanks Company, Aberdeen plays a key role of putting content in context for the global direct and targeted marketing company. Aberdeen's analytical and independent view of the "customer optimization" process of Harte-Hanks (Information - Opportunity - Insight - Engagement - Interaction) extends the client value and accentuates the strategic role Harte-Hanks brings to the market. For additional information, visit Aberdeen http://www.aberdeen.com or call (617) 723-7890, or to learn more about Harte-Hanks, call (800) 456-9748 or go to http://www.harte-hanks.com.

About Virtela

Virtela, the world's largest independent managed services company, offers award-winning managed services including MPLS and IP-based Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), Security, Remote Access, and WAN/LAN Device Monitoring and Management, to some of the most competitive multinational companies in the world. Offering services in 190 countries, Virtela integrates and manages best-of-breed service providers through partnerships with 500+ carriers, to address the unique needs of its customers. Virtela is headquartered in Denver, Colorado, with Global Network Operations Centers in Denver, Mumbai, India and Manila, Philippines. For more information, please call +1 (720) 475-4000 or visit www.virtela.net.

Media Contact:
Jane Morrissey
Virtela
720.475.4012 (office)
303.808.7671 (mobile)
jmorrissey@virtela.com

Susan Wise
Greenough Communications
(650) 646-3268 x11
swise@greenoughcom.com