Industry leaders join together to deliver solutions that remove OSS constraints from the growth of your Business

TeleManagement World, Nice, France-May 22, 2000-TeleManagement Forum (TMF), the leading industry forum for the operations software community, today announced a new initiative for the design and development of a seamless Integrated Service Management solution. Part of TMF's market-leading Catalyst Projects, the Integrated Multi-Service Management project will focus on addressing the "plug and play" capabilities service providers need to effectively grow their businesses.

Profitability and market strength for service providers will be determined by their ability to quickly respond to customer-driven requests and dynamically provision a multitude of voice, video, and data services. The Integrated Multi-Service Management (IMSM) solution combines the strengths of industry leaders in next generation network services to give service providers the flexible and extensible operations solutions needed to meet these market conditions. Participating organizations are Cisco Systems, Inc., Hewlett-Packard, Cambio Inc., Concord Communications, Syndesis, IGS, Active Software, Clarify, Portal Software and Newbridge Networks. The customer sponsor for the project is MediaOne.

"To succeed service providers must differentiate themselves by offering new services before the competition and leveraging those new capabilities quickly - while contending with complex operations solutions comprised of multi-vendor technologies," said Beth Adams, president and CEO of the TeleManagement Forum. "The Integrated Multi-Service Management catalyst project is addressing those challenges."

Based on the plug and play architectural guidelines developed by TMF, the program will give service providers the means to respond quickly to market trends and easily accommodate sudden changes due to mergers, acquisitions and new industry initiatives. Unlike other multi-vendor integrated service management systems, which generally suffer from high integration costs and inflexibility to change, the IMSM approach offers ease of integration, cost-effectiveness and flexibility. The Integrated Multi-Service Management project builds on an existing integrated service management solution developed for ATM and frame relay. The architectural framework utilizes a workflow-based process engine, a common information bus, and a common information model.

TMF will be showcasing the Integrated Multi-Service Management capabilities at TeleManagement World, May 22-25 in Nice, France. The demonstration will show flow-through automated provisioning, including circuit assignment and activation for an ATM circuit that crosses Cisco and Newbridge network domains. To see the demonstration, visit the Catalyst booth #4 at the show.

The TeleManagement Forum is a non-profit, global organization of service providers, suppliers and integrators providing industry leadership and driving the development of New Generation Operations Systems and Software (OSS). TM Forum members collaborate to produce pragmatic solutions that streamline key business processes for the management of emerging communications, e-business and information services. The result is a series of strategic frameworks, architectures and tools that enable the end-to-end integration of operations and management systems using off-the-shelf, plug-and-play technologies. As an industry association, the TM Forum also sponsors a broad range of education and information services to its members and the industry at large including TeleManagement World, the premier event for management and operations. Currently, the TM Forum has more than 290 members from 35 countries including all types of service providers, equipment manufacturers, software suppliers and systems integrators. For more information visit www.tmforum.org.

For more information on the organizations involved in the IMSM project, please reference:

• Active Software, Inc., NASDAQ: ASWX, www.activesoftware.com
  
• Cambio, Inc., OTC:CAMB, www.cambio.com
  
• Cisco Systems, Inc., NASDAQ: CSCO, www.cisco.com
  
• Clarify, Inc., NASDAQ: CLFY, www.clarify.com
  
• Concord Communications, Inc., NASDAQ: CCRD, www.concord.com
  
• Hewlett-Packard Company, NYSE: HWP, www.hp.com
  
• Information+Graphics Systems, Inc. (IGS), www.igs.com
  
• MediaOne, NYSE: UMG, www.mediaone.com
  
• Newbridge Networks, NYSE: NN, TSE: NNC, www.newbridge.com
  
• Portal Software, Inc., NASDAQ: PRSF, www.portal.com
  

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