Cap Gemini Ernst & Young o Cisco Systems o CommTech o CrossKeys o France Telecom o Granite Systems o Microsoft o Portal Software o RiverSoft o Sun o Telcordia o Verizon Team Up to Meet IP Service Management Challenge TeleManagement World Showcase: CHICAGO (USA), November 13, 2000 - The TeleManagement Forum's Plug & Play IP Service Management Catalyst, a team of leading telecom software, services, and hardware suppliers, today announced it has deployed a new solution providing plug & play solutions for service order management, provisioning, activation, assurance, and billing of complex voice/data/video services over an IP service network. The IPSM solution is being demonstrated this week, November 14-16, 2000, at the TeleManagement World Showcase presented by the TM Forum in Chicago.

"The innovative work the Plug & Play IP Service Management Catalyst (IPSM) is demonstrating is a functional, real-world solution that will help communications service providers (CSPs) migrate to an open IP platform and provide fully-managed, IP-based services," said Jim Warner, Chief Operating Officer, TeleManagement Forum.

"IPSM Phase I has demonstrated a plug-and-play approach in the truest sense: each component is part of a messaging strategy and conforms to a request-response model," said IPSM co-lead John Eldridge, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young (CGE&Y). "We can remove one component, insert another with the same functionality, and continue as though there were no changes to the platform, from both an integration and an operations perspective." Added Bernard Maier of IPSM co-sponsor Verizon, "Thanks to IPSM, network solutions providers (NSPs) and independent software vendors (ISVs) can build market-ready, cutting-edge IP service management solutions enabling service providers to deploy IP-based services to their customers. Any CSP currently implementing, considering implementing, or that believes it may ever implement IP-based networks and services can benefit from the IPSM solution."

The Plug & Play IP Service Management Catalyst (IPSM) features project sponsors France Telecom and Verizon; systems integration and project managers CGE&Y and CommTech Corporation; and interoperating vendors Cisco Systems, CommTech, CrossKeys Systems Corporation, Granite Systems, Microsoft, Portal Software, Riversoft, Sun Microsystems, and Telcordia Technologies.

Plug & Play IP Service Management Catalyst (IPSM): Meeting the Challenge

As CSPs around the globe position themselves to meet burgeoning market demand by providing existing and enhanced services on an IP infrastructure, it has become apparent that traditional engineering principles are not effective in providing a flexible platform for delivering convergent services. Even the world's largest CSPs such as U.S. ILECs and international PTTs, with extensive experience in circuit-switched and data communications environments, are challenged to engineer, provision, and define performance criteria, set SLA policy, or diagnose network alarms that support the IP environment. IPSM addresses these issues and needs while accommodating the IP environment's impacts on services; network behavior (limitations and gaps); application performance; service migration; monitoring; quality of service (QoS); service level agreements (SLAs); and service quality and delivery (order management, provisioning, and activation).

Plug & Play IP Service Management Catalyst (IPSM) Components

Participating companies contributed the following solution components:

• Cap Gemini Ernst & Young (www.cgey.com/telco): Cap Gemini Ernst & Young Telecom, Media & Networks is a worldwide consultancy focused on the needs of communications service providers, and offers a balanced mix of business transformation and systems transformation that enables clients to maximize market responsiveness, enhance service delivery, and strengthen profit margins. Organized as a Global Business Unit to ensure a communications-specific focus, the firm employs approximately 6,000 dedicated telecom professionals and has a track record of more than 3,200 successful telecom projects. Cap Gemini Ernst & Young possesses a network of Centers of Excellence and Solutions Labs for telecom, which are used to rapidly define business issues and create solutions with customers. CGE&Y managed and coordinated the implementation of IPSM with CommTech Corporation.
  
  
• Cisco Systems (www.cisco.com): the New Generation Plug & Play architecture was developed utilizing Cisco's networking hardware and management solutions. Designed to maximize Cisco's IOS(tm) software feature set for efficient network functionality management, these solutions allow for tighter integration of best of breed products and technologies, creating an interoperable, scalable, and flexible OSS infrastructure. Cisco's Virtual Private Network Solution Center (VPN SC) leverages MPLS technology and comprises an integrated, open, and programmable set of core management functionality. Cisco IP Manager provides fully scalable, element-level provisioning with automated configuration creation, management, and archiving for rapidly deploying high-quality Cisco IOS configurations to customer edge routers.
  
  
• CommTech Corporation (www.comm.com): CommTech provides CSPs world-class, end-to-end service order management, flow-through provisioning, and activation focused on broadband, xDSL, cable, voice, and the converging NGN. CommTech's expertise delivers effective solutions which speed development and marketing of new service offerings; improve time-to-market to generate revenue quickly; enhance customer service; and build brand loyalty. CommTech's FastFlow. Suite offers a Workflow Engine that provides Java/CORBA/XML/SQL integration with CommTech modules and partner applications. Its Business Process Editor (BPE) enables rapid customization of solutions to match a CSP's business processes. Its multi-tier, thin-client architecture provides unparalleled flexibility to CSPs, business consultants/systems integrators, developers, and users to support evolving networks, services, and architectures.
  
  
• CrossKeys Systems Corporation (www.crosskeys.com): CrossKeys develops software that makes the Internet work for business. The world's largest and fastest growing service providers manage equipment, traffic, and service on their telecom networks with CrossKeys. CrossKeys' Resolve. system integrates with the other OSS applications and the network to provide full service level agreement (SLA) lifecycle management, enabling the customization, creation, and continuous monitoring of SLAs in the IP service management environment.
  
  
• France Telecom (www.francetelecom.fr): France Telecom is one of the world's leading telephone carriers, with activities in over 75 countries. This puts us in a good position to know that no two markets are identical. And that listening to the particular needs of our clients, and adapting to the differing constraints and opportunities of each project we undertake for them is crucial. France Telecom is a Service Provider sponsor of this Catalyst project, providing business and service level requirements structured toward open component-based IP management solutions as we move toward the New Generation OSS (NGOSS) environment.
  
  
• Granite Systems (www.granite.com): Granite Systems provides network and service resource management software for carrierswith wireless, wireline, optical and packet technology networks. Utilizing Granite Systems' Xpercom product suite, CSPs can manage inventories of network resources and capacity, define network configurations, order and schedule resources and provide a database of record to other OSSs. An Inc. 500 company in 2000, Granite Systems enables its CSP clients to eliminate resource redundancy, improve network reliability, and speed service deployment. Founded in 1993, Granite Systems is headquartered in Manchester, NH, with offices in Denver, CO, Miami, FL, and Fleet, U.K.
  
  
• Microsoft(www.microsoft.com): Microsoft is the worldwide leader in software, services, and Internet technologies for personal and business computing, offering a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software-any time, any place, and on any device. Microsoft's OSS Working Group partners offer innovative provisioning, management and billing solutions based on open standards, including eXtensible Markup Language (XML). CSPs worldwide have deployed applications on the Windows platform to rapidly deploy new services, reduce operational costs, and improve customer service.
  
  
• Portal Software (www.portal.com): Portal Software, Inc. is building the business infrastructure for the Internet. Based in Cupertino, CA, it is the leading provider of customer management and billing software for Internet and emerging, next-generation communications services. The company's real-time solution enables CSPs to manage customers, support services, and collect money. Built 'from the ground up' to manage IP services, Portal's Infranet. product provides Web-enabled authentication and authorization, input/collection, billing, rating, and usage monitoring of IP services in real time. It is extensible and highly scalable for multiple payment/business models.
  
  
• RiverSoft (www.riversoft.com): RiverSoft, the only provider of interventionless infrastructure management solutions, helps organizations to easily and efficiently keep pace with the explosive growth and dynamic nature of e-business-driven networks. Acting as a radar for the Internet, RiverSoft's is the only solution in the industry that takes the guesswork out of network management by automatically discovering and maintaining an in-depth view of the network. By automatically maintaining an in-depth view of network connectivity, RiverSoft provides accurate root cause analysis of network faults and dramatically reduces the cost of managing e-business infrastructures.
  
  
• Sun Microsystems (www.sun.com): since its inception in 1982, a singular vision, "The Network Is The Computer," has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. to its position as a leading provider of high quality hardware, software and services for establishing enterprise-wide intranets and expanding the power of the Internet. Sun has contributed an Enterprise 450 server including Solaris on which the IPSM team is running several of its partner applications.
  
  
• Telcordia (www.telcordia.com): Telcordia Technologies, Inc., an SAIC company, is one of the world's largest providers of OSS, network software and consulting and engineering services to the telecommunications industry. The Telcordia software organization has been ISO 9001-certified and has been assessed at Level 5, the highest level of the Capability Maturity Model.. Telcordia's Network Configuration Manager is a one-stop, centralized application from which planners and engineers can configure and manage equipment, facilities, and network inventory related to Next Generation Networks and services (i.e. IP services, ATM, Frame Relay, Cell Relay Service, ADSL, etc.). It supports flow-through service activation and shared database access by easily integrating with other Telcordia or third-party order, entry, network engineering, and element management applications.
  
  
• Verizon (www.verizon.com): Verizon is a National North American Service Provider of voice, data, and wireless solutions and International Telecommunications and Information services.As a TM Forum Corporate member, Verizon is a Service Provider sponsor of this Catalyst project, providing business and service level requirements structured to address and analyze open component-based IP management solutions as we move toward the New Generation OSS (NGOSS) environment.

About TeleManagement Forum

TeleManagement Forum is an international non-profit group of information and communications service providers, software developers, equipment suppliers, and systems integrators focused exclusively on management and operations issues. By bringing together the entire "value chain" of the information and communications services industry, TM Forum provides a collaborative environment in which buyers and suppliers of business operations support systems can develop pragmatic solutions to pressing problems. Its latest initiative, to define New Generation Operations Support Systems (NGOSS), is aimed at achieving market-available off-the-shelf systems that can plug-and-play far more easily than today. The end result is a series of strategic frameworks and tools that enable the end-to-end integration of operations and management systems in support of key business processes. 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. Currently, the TM Forum has more than 361 members from 36 countries including all types of service providers, equipment manufacturers, software suppliers, and systems integrators. For more information please visit www.telemanagementworld.com.