Umniah, as a new GSM/GPRS/EDGE operator in the Jordan market, has proven its capabilities by acquiring 200,000 plus subscribers in its first three months of operation.

To gain market share, Umniah simplified and accelerated service activation and provided flexible convergent billing for its pre- and post-paid subscribers. Working with HP, Umniah deployed HP OpenView Service Activator to automatically configure network equipment to set up and manage mobile services.

The solution enabled Umniah to deliver and provision new services more quickly — and consolidate provisioning on a single platform, which reduced cost and complexity. The HP solution also linked directly to Umniah’s customer relationship management (CRM) application, so subscribers can customize services in real time.

With HP OpenView Internet Usage Manager, Umniah can mediate all billing data, pre- and post-paid, into its billing system and CRM application.

“Umniah is committed to providing its customers with the fast, easy activation of services and billing flexibility that other operators lack. The HP OpenView solutions and OSS expertise have been a key part of that effort,” said Michael Dagher, managing partner, Umniah. “By delivering new services to customers faster, with the billing choices they want, Umniah can provide a better customer experience — and reduce our own operational costs.”

The HP OpenCall Media Platform, already widely deployed, has now been expanded to incorporate the MRF capability in emerging IMS networks. Current and planned capabilities include audio and voice services (interactive voice response, voicemail, conferencing) as well as a wide range of multimedia, collaborative and interactive services such as video mail, video conferencing, participation TV and music sharing.

A key feature of the HP OpenCall Media Platform MRF is that it can support the real-time, simultaneous blending of voice, data and multimedia services on IMS networks. For example, in an IMS network, wireless users can create an audio or video conference, share photos and messages and provide location-specific information — all in one integrated session that is seamless and easy for the callers.

By bundling sets of services that support people’s on-the-go lifestyles, operators anticipate that IMS-based networks will help increase average revenue per user. Also, the layered, standards-based IMS architecture enables operators to streamline infrastructure, reduce costs and converge wireline and wireless networks.

HP (NYSE:HPQ)(Nasdaq:HPQ) today unveiled products that will help the world’s telecommunications providers evolve to the all-digital networks that are needed to offer blended voice, data and multimedia services across wireless, wireline and broadband networks.

In the software arena, HP introduced a powerful media server, the HP OpenCall Media Platform Media Resource Function (MRF), that provides a foundation for advanced multimedia and interactive services in emerging Internet Protocol Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) networks.

In the operations support system (OSS) market, HP announced that Umniah, a new, fast-growing mobile operator in Jordan, is using HP Integrated Service Management and HP OpenView products to streamline service activation and subscriber provisioning.

“With both IT and telecom expertise, HP is in a unique position to help our customers evolve their legacy networks toward IP-based technologies,” said Marc Rotthier, vice president, Network and Service Provider Business — EMEA, HP. “Few if any companies can match HP’s array of software, service-oriented architectures, carrier-grade platforms, end-user devices, partners and global integration services.”

Comptel Corporation, a leading convergent mediation, charging, provisioning and network inventory software vendor, has deployed Comptel Online mediation solution for SMS services to Indosat a leading telecommunication and information provider in Indonesia. The system was delivered by Comptel jointly with PT Lintas Teknologi Indonesia and Comptel’s associate company Tango Telecom. The value of agreement has not been announced.

Comptel Online Mediation solution for SMS is based on Comptel OnlineLink® and Comptel SMSLink™ products using Tango Telecom’s signalling technology with network level pre-delivery control function for SMS services. The solution enables Indosat to perform flexible online charging for all SMS traffic and services. In addition it provides an instant SMS delivery architecture with full scalability to meet the demanding requirements of the Indosat network. Solution provides capability to massively increase the capacity, performance and flexibility of the existing SMS infrastructure.

The system has successfully handled in excess of 106 million SMS attempts over the two days of recent Eid Al Fitr celebration which creates the highest peak traffic of the year in Indonesia. The system has provided higher quality of service to Indosat’s customers during the busy period that is challenging the network capacity.

The solution was chosen by Indosat after rigorous, fair and highly competitive evaluation and it was deployed in timely fashion. The solution has been integrated effectively across multiple sites utilising Indosat’s existing infrastructure. The new SMSC architecture is implemented with sophisticated real time charging and rating capability and is able to provide advanced new services rapidly to Indosat’s growing customer base. Furthermore, the solution improves effectively the promptness of the SMS deliveries, which is essential to improving further the ever important customer satisfaction.

“We are delighted to be able to announce the deployment of our market leading Online Mediation solution with Indosat, one of the largest such deployments worldwide. It is a key vote of confidence in the Comptel OnlineLink and Comptel SMSLink products, and we look forward to strengthening our cooperation with Indosat and to helping them to consolidate their position as a leading operator in the huge Indonesian market”, said Kari Miettinen, Vice President and head of Comptel’s APAC business, Comptel Corporation.

“Lintas has played the key role of system integration for this project. Key success factors for this large project have been our long relationship with Indosat, our competent local resources and the robust and advanced technology provided by Comptel and Tango and also I am proud of the team that worked round the clock with the Indosat team to ensure that solution was implemented on-time and supported during the critical period”, said Subagia Handaja, President Director, Lintas Teknologi Indonesia.

In addition to the new name, the company has expanded its management team to include new CEO Ashley Stirrup and CTO Rao Kota, launched a new website at www.ultriva.com, and has renamed its upgraded products — Ultriva Electronic Kanban and Ultriva Lean Scheduling.

Ultriva Electronic Kanban, an enabler of consumption driven replenishment processes, eliminates stock-outs while reducing inventory levels. Ultriva Lean Scheduling complements Ultriva’s replenishment capabilities by optimizing production schedules in real-time around the customers’ want date. These solutions shorten cycle times, increase on-time delivery performance, reduce inventory levels and reduce the overall cost of manufacturing.

“The new name marks a new chapter for our company,” said Stirrup. “When Ultriva was founded we were ahead of the market, working with a handful of charter customers that were early adopters. Today we see tremendous interest from mainstream manufacturing and we have expanded every area of our business to meet the needs of the market.”

As chief executive officer of Ultriva, Stirrup has overall responsibility for the company’s strategy and operations. He brings more than 15 years of enterprise software and consulting experience. Most recently, Stirrup was vice president of products, marketing and business development at Elance, Inc., a leading provider of procurement software. New CTO Rao Kota, Ultriva’s chief software architect and head of development for all applications, was most recently with Amdocs where he was one of the primary architects of their web-based CRM applications. He joins a management team that also includes Ultriva founder and president Narayan Laksham, and vice president of sales Gene Cranford.

“Ultriva with their electronic kanban functions addresses the rapidly growing market for lean manufacturing software,” said Ralph Rio, Director, ARC Advisory Group. “Lean is the primary improvement methodology used in the discrete industries and we continue to be impressed with the substantial inventory savings and stock-out reductions that Ultriva customers experience on their Lean journey. Ultriva is clearly positioned for a growth surge.”

Using Ultriva’s software, customers around the world have been able to move toward advanced, pull-based, lean manufacturing systems. Ultriva customers report inventory savings while improving their on-time delivery performance and eliminating stock-outs. The visual nature of the software reinforces lean processes and enables users to continuously improve plant operations. On average, Ultriva customers realize more than $2.2 million per plant in inventory savings, delivering a return on their software investment in less than six months.

“The (Ultriva) Electronic Kanban has enabled us to successfully apply desirable lean techniques in the area of pull systems during the last two years,” said Glenn Miller, plant manager — Bridgeton Operation, IR-Hussman Corporation. “The tool enables key closed loop communications with external and internal suppliers. The loops have been quite successful in reducing inventory and eliminating stock-outs in the areas where the demand is stable as well as where the orders are not accurate relative to actual requirements.”

Ultriva’s current customers are medium-to-large manufacturing operations. The company plans to expand and enhance its product offerings to current customers and seek new users.

Through partnerships with lean consultants, and hardware and software providers, Ultriva provides a comprehensive solution that enables companies to quickly adopt lean manufacturing techniques while streamlining and optimizing their supply chain across customers, plants and suppliers.

Syndesis, the worldwide leader in Convergent Service Delivery Management solutions, today launched new enhancements to its IP solutions that dramatically simplify and expand the ability of communications service providers to create and deliver high-margin IP services, including Triple Play, IP-VPNs, IPTV, VoIP and many others.

The enhanced IP functionality is available in the award-winning Syndesis® NetProvisionâ„¢ 5.0 product line and reaffirms Syndesis’ leadership in the ever more critical IP service delivery management space. Syndesis’ unique offerings provide Convergent Service Delivery Management, combining industry best practices for IP service implementation with the power and legendary effectiveness of Syndesis’ industry-leading provisioning and discovery solutions.

The IP service delivery management enhancements are available today and include:

IP Solution Extensibility: An environment for the rapid creation or modification of services, combining the immediate advantages of a robust off-the-shelf IP solution set with flexible extensions to address specific tailoring for the most customized of carrier environments.

IP Configuration Management: Supporting new equipment commissioning and router configuration management, to leverage network investment more quickly and deliver services to market earlier.

MPLS Traffic Engineering: Delivering MPLS-based traffic engineering capabilities to enable service providers to maximize network efficiency and turn more capacity into revenue-generating services.

Beyond MPLS VPNs: Extending beyond MPLS VPNs to support alternative VPN technologies such as IPSec and GRE.

Having pioneered VPN and IP services deployment with companies like Cisco, Bell Canada, Telecom Italia and SBC, Syndesis is the service delivery solution of choice for IP services at leading carriers worldwide.

“There is no question that IP services are fast becoming a primary source of revenue for the communications industry,” said Chris Swan, SVP Sales, Marketing and Alliances for Syndesis. “The question today is which CSPs will effectively clear the hurdles to long-term IP success and, as a result, go on to dominate the IP services markets. Carriers must strive to provide an always-on environment, where customers can access whatever they need, whenever and wherever they need it, by plugging into a network or community of services. Powered by Syndesis, this vision is quickly turning into a reality.”

“Communications service providers’ business over the next five years depends on their cost-effective growth of IP-based services such as VoIP, IPTV, mobile content and IP-VPN,” said Larry Goldman, founder and analyst at OSS Observer. “Automated configuration and service fulfillment is an essential step for CSPs to scale the service deployments to generate significant new revenue.”

Syndesis’ IP capabilities and success will be highlighted in a Light Reading webinar on Wednesday, November 30th at 12pm ET. The webinar, entitled “Managing the Complexity of IPTV deployment,” will address issues of relevance to all types of service providers, be they large nationals or smaller regional providers.

Convergys Corporation (NYSE: CVG), a global leader in providing customer care, human resources, and billing services, today announced that its Employee Care Learning Solutions offering received both gold and silver awards in the 2005 Brandon Hall Excellence in Learning Awards. Convergys was recognized during an awards ceremony and reception held in Long Beach, California, as part of the 2005 Training Fall Conference & Expo.

Both awards recognized Convergys’ learning solutions work in the Custom Content Category, Special Strength: Simulation. The Gold Award honors the development of the Microsoft Go-to-Market Sales Simulation for the Account Manager, and the development of the Mazda Selling Skills Simulation, which won the Silver Award.

“Convergys is delighted to receive this recognition from Brandon Hall, and these awards reflect the hard work and outstanding capabilities of our team to achieve superior business results for our clients,” said Marianne Langlois, vice president of Learning Solutions in Convergys’ Employee Care business. “Savvy organizations that understand their competitive edge comes from their workforce are continually seeking ways to deliver sophisticated employee training and learning solutions. These awards further validate the ability of Convergys to deliver results that meet the growing, complex training needs of organizations across all industries.”

The Brandon Hall Excellence in Learning Awards are presented by Brandon Hall Research, one of the leading research and consulting firms in training and development. Now in its eleventh year, the Awards program showcases exceptional work in innovative learning.

“The winning entries this year show a great combination of creativity and practical results. The winners are excellent both in terms of innovation and impact on the business,” said Brandon Hall, Ph.D., chairman of the Excellence in Learning Awards program. “These winners show us what the future of learning looks like.”

Convergys is one of the first human resources administration and management companies to offer learning business process outsourcing (LBPO) services and has more than 450 learning customers. Convergys provides services ranging from comprehensive outsourcing of the entire learning function, to selective outsourcing of administrative tasks and processes, to out-tasking discrete e-learning initiatives. Learning solutions from Convergys help companies achieve breakthrough improvements in business performance by reinventing their approach to training and improving the cost, quality, and effectiveness of learning. Convergys is Outthinking, Outdoing [tm] on behalf of its clients every day.

About Brandon Hall Research
Brandon Hall, Ph.D. is the CEO of Brandon Hall Research and author of the groundbreaking “Web-Based Training Cookbook.” Since 1992, Brandon Hall Research (www.brandon-hall.com) has been providing independent research reports and expert advice on the tools and practices of innovative learning. Brandon Hall Research conducts the Awards program each year to recognize the best and to identify the new cutting edge of innovative learning. To honor the Award winners Brandon Hall Research hosts the Awards reception and ceremony in partnership with VNU and in conjunction with the Training Fall Conference and Expo.

cVidya Networks, a leading provider of next generation Revenue Assurance solutions, announced today that it had participated in a catalyst project with a team from the TeleManagement Forum (TMF) in which its MoneyMap® software solution successfully helped to reduce the costs of implementing internal procedures essential for measuring compliance with the Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX). Using the automated software solution, cVidya implemented configuration and usage based controls directly related to financial reporting in a scenario that involved back-to-back billing of mobile operator MTS Russia. The operator was partnering with long distance carriers to provide long distance service to its subscribers. Using a sample set of processes being monitored under SOX, the catalyst team demonstrated that the number of processes could be cut significantly in the project entitled “Sarbanes Oxley Compliance through Next Generation OSS.”

Under section 404 of the Sarbanes Oxley, companies must now establish and maintain an internal control structure as well as execute full internal control assessments, evaluations and issue a report each fiscal year. The catalyst team, led by Ernst and Young Moscow, mapped a sample out of approximately 600 existing processes that require monitoring under SOX, into the eTOM model in order to reduce their number.

As part of the catalyst project, cVidya further employed its MoneyMap® software to demonstrate implementation of controls set to automatically monitor these business processes. The use of MoneyMap’s® dashboard, control wizard and configuration features significantly reduced the time needed by the financial audit teams to supervise the accuracy and the completeness of finance related controls.

“cVidya has participated with the TMF on a number of catalyst projects and we are pleased that our role in this one could provide valuable input on how to streamline the auditing and revenue assurance processes as well as reduce the overall cost to telecom operators”, said Dr. Gadi Solotorevsky, cVidya’s Chief Scientist and TMF Revenue Assurance Modeling Team Leader.

“Even before the enactment of SOX, the complexity of the operational processes was of considerable concern to telecom operators,” said Limor Schwartz, cVidya’s V.P. of RA and Risk Management Solutions. “CFOs have long sought solutions to mitigate the risks and manage their exposure on their financial reports. The catalyst project proved that the flexibility and precision of MoneyMap® allows telecom operators to use an automated solution to conform to SOX in a cost effective manner while simultaneously lowering their operational costs.”

Axiom Systems Ltd, a provider of software for the design and delivery of broadband and IP services, today announced a landmark global framework agreement with one of the world’s largest service providers, Cable and Wireless.

Cable & Wireless, which has the UK’s second largest network infrastructure, has adopted the award-winning AXIOSS® technology in order to shift to Next Generation Networks and a single, integrated and versatile IP based platform.”

The multi-million pound deal will see the Axiom Systems AXIOSS(R), used to design and deliver services such as IPVPN, Metro Ethernet and VoIP. Their current IPVPN OSS systems will be replaced by AXIOSS and new systems and processes will be created to launch next generation IP services.

Gareth Senior, Chief Executive Officer at Axiom Systems said, “Given the size of the Cable and Wireless network, they required a solution with a holistic approach, which caters for a number of different services; differing types of technology; and which works across a number of different countries. AXIOSS solves this problem, whilst offering the ability to design new services as and when the market requires it.”

This implementation will offer a number of benefits to Cable and Wireless:

- Enhance their ability to offer market leading IP services, in line with the rapidly developing demand from business and residential customers;

- Offer their customers the opportunity to migrate to new services ahead of the equivalent transformation in leading competitors;

- Reduce Cable & Wireless’ operating and maintenance costs as a result of the simplification of physical and software architecture.

Mr Senior continues, “By joining us as a customer, Cable and Wireless has further cemented AXiOSS as the leading service design and provisioning solution and further boosts the reputation of our company in terms of market innovation and leadership. Axiom System’s business has seen significant growth over the past two years and our customer base demonstrates the Suite’s success at meeting the needs of today’s competitive market.”

LEAD IP Systems Ltd, an innovative developer and supplier of IP-Telephony access solutions for broadband service providers, has introduced a new set of ISDN services for IP-Telephony operators.

One of the unique ISDN services is the Advice-Of-Charge (AOC) which allows the operator to provide billing information and metering services to hotels, hospitals, call centres etc. allowing customers to preserve capital investment in their internal billing systems.

Supporting AOC for both ETSI and Italtel standards, metering as well as currency formats, LEAD’s PowerGate CPE locally generates metering messages to the customer’s billing system.

Additional ISDN services such as DDI (Direct dialling into PBX extensions), MSN (Multiple numbers), Caller-ID, Trunk hunting and Trunk grouping, provides an IP-Telephony solution which fully replaces existing ISDN lines.

“We found out that ISDN installation tends to be more complex than POTS one. LEAD’s PowerGate CPE includes a built in ISDN wizard which indicates potential wiring, PBX or ISDN configuration errors.” said Oded Tubias, LEAD product manager, “This dramatically reduce the installation period and allows customers an easy and transparent switch from existing Telco lines to the alternative IP-Telephony access service.”

The PowerGate can further synchronise itself to existing Telco ISDN lines, offering multi-source service to the PBX – both traditional and IP. PowerGate comes in with 2 BRI (PowerGateD2+) or 4 BRI (PowerGateD4+) supporting 8 simultaneous calls per CPE with additional cascading of more units using the sync channel.

About LEAD IP Systems
LEAD IP Systems Ltd. an innovative developer and supplier of IP-Telephony access solutions for broadband service providers. LEAD provides an advanced multi-service Telephony, telecommunications systems and technologies for service creation, provisioning, management, SIP SoftSwitch and billing mediation. LEAD IP’s strategy is to offer breakthrough solutions that lavarage service providers services. The Company’s premier product, LEADsystem(TM), empowers service providers to create and provision new and differentiated revenue-generating services, rapidly and with the lowest Total Cost of Ownership and upfront investment. LEAD IP Systems Ltd., headquartered in Misgav, Israel, is a wholly owned subsidiary of LEAD Corporation Inc. located in, part of the BATT Corporation group.