Portal Software Announces Infranet Distributed Nonstop Architecture Technology

Business Wire, March 18, 1999

CUPERTINO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 18, 1999--

Distributed Implementation Technology Delivers New Level of

High-Availability in Internet Customer Management and Billing

Portal Software, Inc., a leading provider of software for Internet and emerging next-generation communications services, today announced Infranet Distributed Nonstop Architecture(TM) (DNA), a new technology included in the latest release of Portal's leading Internet customer management and billing software, Infranet(R) 5.5.3.

Because Infranet DNA delivers a new level of high-availability in the customer management and billing component of an Internet service infrastructure, providers can offer their customers uninterrupted service access and usage in the event that the network link to Infranet or the main Infranet database is inaccessible.

"For our customers which include some of the world's leading providers of Internet and next-generation communications services, a service outage could amount to significant revenue loss," said Dave Labuda, chief technology officer at Portal Software. "Zero downtime is the ultimate goal of every mission-critical system. Infranet DNA helps our customers address this issue by delivering high-availability in the customer management and billing system."

Portal's Infranet software is a comprehensive solution that meets the complex, mission-critical provisioning, accounting, reporting and marketing needs of providers of Internet-based services. The "Real Time No Limits" Infranet solution enables the real-time provisioning and reporting of services, including such functions as account creation, user authentication and authorization, activity tracking, pricing and rating, billing and customer service, including self-service, all on a scale of up to millions of users.

Portal's Infranet DNA Technology

Portal's Infranet DNA technology is a mechanism for distributing an Infranet implementation geographically, allowing providers to offer uninterrupted services access and usage even when a main Infranet database is down or inaccessible. Infranet DNA configuration consists of one master Infranet system and any number of distributed satellites.

The satellites, each containing a subset of the master Infranet data and designed to require little or no administration, offload customer authentication and authorization tasks from the main site by processing login requests against the local data. Infranet DNA offers a number of benefits for Internet and next-generation communications services providers and customers including: -0-

--   Revenue Assurance -- If the main installation is inaccessible,
     billable events are queued at the satellite until the central
     site is back online.
--   Redundancy for failover -- if one Infranet DNA satellite fails,
     the system automatically moves processing over to the master
     database or can be configured to fail over to another satellite.
     This cascading failover capability provides new levels of
     implementation flexibility and fault tolerance.
--   Live database maintenance -- although databases have built-in
     capabilities for maximum high-availability, the database is still
     a potential point of failure. With Infranet DNA the service
     provider's operation continues uninterrupted, even without access
     to the master database. This capability lets the database
     administrators perform live system maintenance, such as operating
     system upgrades, easy Infranet upgrades and easy database
     maintenance.
--   Scalability improvement -- Because Infranet DNA offloads
     processing from the master system by distributing it to many
     Infranet DNA satellites, service providers can now accommodate
     many more subscribers while maintaining a very high level of
     performance.
--   Performance improvement -- because the data is geographically
     distributed local logins are extremely fast; customer
     authentication and authorization queries do not need to travel
     over long distances over many network hops. While billable
     activity information is sent back to the master site, subscribers
     do not need to wait for any immediate response from these
     transactions.
--   Low bandwidth requirement -- by eliminating centralized customer
     authentication and authorization, the required bandwidth between
     the master and a remote site is significantly reduced.

     Additional Infranet 5.5.3 Features

     In addition to the Infranet DNA technology feature, Infranet
5.5.3 also includes the following new enhancements:

--   Data archiving -- safely moves old data to offline storage.
--   Enhanced accounts receivable management -- enhanced features for
     write-offs, adjustments and payment allocation as well as
     refinements to the graphical user interface.
--   General ledger interface -- new general ledger reports and
     separation of general ledger reporting by customer segment.
--   Additional credit card processing integration -- integration with
     Chase/FDC credit card processing