Lucent Technologies Integrates Granite Systems' Xpercom Into Its OneVision Suite of Management Software Offerings - network configuration management software - Company Business and Marketing

Cambridge Telcom Report, Jan 17, 2000

Lucent Technologies and Granite Systems, Inc., Monday announced a global alliance that enables Lucent to offer its service provider customers Granite Systems' Xpercom product, a comprehensive inventory and design management software system that helps meet the challenge of accurately tracking network resources.

Xpercom delivers a leading, technically-advanced solution that provides inventory and design data on sites, equipment, circuit segments, circuit paths and cable. In addition, customer and network information can be entered, modified, stored and viewed from Xpercom's centralized database - all with the click of a mouse.

"Xpercom, combined with Lucent's OneVision management systems portfolio, provides flow-through provisioning and accurate network data synchronization for complex multi-domain, multi-vendor networks," said Mike Decelle, vice president of global market development for Lucent Technologies' Communications Software Group. "The addition of Xpercom expands and enhances the Communications Software Physical Resource Management solution, further extending our flexible suite of products for meeting the needs of network operators."

Xpercom has a unique, open API that treats network elements as objects. Each object class, such as sites or equipment, has a set of attributes and a set of operations that can be performed with or for that object. This enables any transmission technology, whether it is wireline, wireless, IP or other, to be entered and tracked from a single, common platform.

"The combined strength of this solution can significantly enhance both incumbent and emerging carriers' competitive advantages," said Jay Borden, president and CEO of Granite Systems. "This combination provides a depth of functionality not yet seen in the industry, spanning all aspects of engineering, operations, and provisioning. Engineering and provisioning processes that once took weeks can now be done in hours."

Lucent's OneVision Management Systems for network operators use open standard interfaces, which create an architecture for interworking capabilities between operations systems. The OneVision architecture thus provides an advanced framework for converging and managing data, transport and circuit-switched networks.

The OneVision platform is built on a state-of-the-art, object-oriented software architecture based on popular industry standards such as JavaTM, C , UNIX, Windows NT, SQL and ORACLE. Lucent continues to work with other vendors of network element, element management and network management systems to help define standard CORBA interfaces for ATM/Frame Relay and IP networking. Lucent is also participating in standards development for Telecommunications Management Network (TMN)-based operations systems and the combined circuit/packet devices of the future.

Granite Systems (http://www.granite.com), based in Manchester, New Hampshire, provides next-generation network configuration management solutions that help telecommunications service providers reduce the cost and complexity of network operations systems and support. A single Xpercom platform serves any carrier, any technology, any network, in any market. Granite Systems' products are used by many of the largest and fastest growing U.S., European, and Latin American emerging carriers for high speed Internet, cable, data, wireless and digital telephone networks.

Lucent Technologies designs, builds and delivers a wide range of public and private networks, communications systems and software, data networking systems, business telephone systems and microelectronics components. Bell Laboratories is the research and development arm for the company. For more information on Lucent Technologies, headquartered in Murray Hill, N.J., USA, visit its Web site at http://www.lucent.com.