KMC Telecom Launches ASP Services in Chattanooga, Providing Key Business Software Applications...

Business Editors/Hi-Tech Writers

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 8, 2001

Communication Company's Move into Information Technology Frees

Businesses From Costly Software Purchases, Upgrades and Maintenance

KMC Telecom, a fiber-based integrated communications

provider, today announced that it is entering the Application Service Provider (ASP) arena in Chattanooga, offering a full range of network hosted business application services, such as Microsoft Office, Microsoft Exchange, QuickBooks, and Great Plains Software, to small, medium and large Chattanooga businesses and organizations.

The new KMC Application Services offering can benefit any Chattanooga business using popular business software for applications such as office productivity, messaging, calendar/scheduling, customer relationship management and accounting. KMC also provides special applications over its optical network geared toward the unique needs of accounting firms and medical practices.

By offering these applications over its high speed network, KMC Telecom frees businesses and organizations from the burden of purchasing, maintaining and upgrading expensive software and hardware. ASP customers need only subscribe to the offerings they want, and KMC provides the required infrastructure and network connections. Using private data lines, companies may now access their mission-critical software applications through KMC, efficiently and cost-effectively.

"KMC meets a key business need by entering the Chattanooga ASP market, and adds a significant new dimension to the area's high technology community," said Keith Campbell, City Director for KMC Telecom in Chattanooga. "We are becoming a complete business partner to our customers, one that provides and integrates their total communications and information technology needs to keep them ahead of the competition - without the hassle or expense of managing their own technology infrastructure."

With its new ASP offering, KMC hosts software applications for customers on dedicated servers, which customers access over private data lines. Because the applications are hosted and maintained off site, customers are not faced with managing complex software on their own, or required to act as their own network/software engineers to support these applications for their end users.

KMC Application Services can save customers between 40 and 60 percent of their annual IT costs, because KMC implements software solutions quickly, owns and maintains all the software licenses, and owns the back-end servers as well as any equipment installed on the customer site, such as network routers and cabling. These low cost, high quality, high performance and highly reliable application services enable customers to focus more resources on perfecting core competencies and growing their business, not on maintaining an expensive IT infrastructure.

KMC Application Services provides full-time support, the highest levels of security and the latest technologies, ensuring that customers have access to their data and applications whenever needed. Pricing for services will vary, depending on customer needs. KMC Telecom Application Services are today available immediately throughout Chattanooga.

About KMC Telecom

KMC Telecom is a fiber-based integrated communications provider offering data, voice and Internet infrastructure services to businesses, government and institutional end-users, Internet service providers, long distance carriers and wireless service providers. KMC's business has two distinct components: serving communications-intensive customers in markets with populations between 100,000 and 750,000, referred to as Tier III markets; and providing data services on a nationwide basis.