21 April 2006

Multimap.com is proud to be among the elite group of winners of the 2006 Queen's Awards for Enterprise. Its Innovation Award is made for the provision of high-quality online mapping and location-based services.

The Queen's Awards for Enterprise are the UK's most prestigious awards for business performance. Company founder and chairman, Sean Phelan, who will be joining other winners and recipients of The Queen's Award for Enterprise Promotion at a celebratory reception in London on Monday, 24th April, said, "On behalf of everyone at Multimap, I am delighted to accept this much celebrated and greatly respected business award. We have enjoyed tremendous growth over the last five years in particular, and are now a truly global brand, with the associated robust and fully scaleable infrastructure firmly in place to ensure a consistently excellent service. That said, innovation continues to underpin all our efforts, so that we remain as flexible as a much smaller operation. This is very much in evidence on our consumer website, www.multimap.com; in the services provided to our business clients across the globe; in our internal business processes; and even behind the concept of the company itself. We're very pleased for this to be recognised by such a prestigious award. Well done to the whole team at Multimap!"

Stephen Brice, Secretary of The Queen's Awards Office, said, "In today's competitive markets, anything that gives a business an edge over the competition is to be welcomed. Market research in recent years has shown that winning a Queen's Award can boost staff morale and raise a company's profile nationally and internationally. Unlike many business awards, The Queen's Awards for Enterprise recognise the contribution made by the whole workforce and Multimap.com can feel justifiably proud of what they have achieved. I hope that their success this year, and the tangible benefits associated with winning, will spur other companies to follow their fine example."

Multimap.com is one of the world's leading providers of online mapping and location-based services. The company has more than 1,000 business clients across the globe, registers 190 million page impressions a month, and has in excess of 10 million unique users. Innovation is a key contributing factor to Multimap's continued staggering growth, and permeates the organisation. Please see Notes to Editors* for examples of the company's commitment to innovation, which the award celebrates.

*Notes to editors

• Multimap was one of the first companies to put maps on the internet in the UK, and was the first company to use maps and map data licensed from Ordnance Survey on a consumer website, and within business mapping services provided over the internet;
• Before Multimap brought simple, easy-to-use mapping services to the public and businesses, the creation and display of maps, and the use of maps within business applications, was a complex and costly process. Business had to acquire their own Geographic Information Systems (GIS), which cost tens to hundreds of thousand of pounds, could only be operated by highly-skilled professionals, and were not focused on producing or delivering maps quickly. Multimap came up with a viable alternative, one which has been responsible for driving growth in the entire sector;
• Multimap created systems that deliver millions of map images, at sub-second speed, very low cost, and which run for weeks and months without interruption;
• Until Multimap's innovations with service architecture, which had to take into account the requirements of both high-volume 24x7 internet operation and real-time mapping and routing, supporting volumes of map traffic in this way was impossible. Map images are very information-intensive and are relatively large files to deliver. Multimap created a system that allowed these dense images to be delivered extremely quickly;
• Multimap's innovations brought traditional cartographic design to the digital world, enabling high-quality map images to be shown on the internet quickly and cost-effectively. The general public could access intuitive and aesthetically pleasing online mapping for the first time;
• Prior to the creation of Multimap's services, a business wishing to show the locations of its stores on its website, for example, would have had to acquire a GIS system, hire GIS experts, and spend months creating maps and developing search mechanisms to pinpoint store locations. Multimap's services have been created so business customers can add maps to their websites quickly and easily; the maps can be live on a website in a matter of hours.

About Multimap

Multimap is Europe's leading provider of mapping and location-based services. The company delivers more online maps, point-to-point driving directions and geo-spatial ("where's my nearest?") searches to more companies than any other supplier in Europe. All services are offered on mobile, PDA, kiosk, and interactive TV platforms and in multiple languages.

The public website, www.multimap.com, provides a range of free, useful services to assist with everyday life. Key features include street-level maps of Europe, USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia; road maps of the world; door-to-door travel directions; aerial photographs; links to location information; and services such as hotel, restaurant and entertainment booking. The public site attracts over 10 million unique users, registers more than 190 million page impressions every month, and is one of the top 10 most visited websites in the UK. Multimap recently featured in The Sunday Times Fast Track 100 league table of fastest-growing unquoted UK companies across all sectors.