Ipanema announced today that Belgacom selected its Autonomic Networking System to develop a new application-centric offering. Real-time visibility and control of what is happening on their Virtual Private Network (VPN) is provided to Belgacom’s customers by the Ipanema element. Ipanema system customers will also be able to dynamically manage, accelerate and prioritize traffic to meet their individual business needs.

Rudy Fleerakkers, Belgacom said: “Our service offering is evolving as new pressures are placed on network managers to guarantee the performance of key applications such as Citrix and SAP and sensitive real-time applications such as VoIP. Businesses are increasingly dependent on networks to underpin their IT infrastructure and, as CRM and ERP applications become more business-critical, the fight for bandwidth becomes greater. The spotlight is now on ICT departments, and network managers are turning to us to give them as much control over their networks as possible. We’re committed to offering the best levels of service to our customers and, with Ipanema, we will be able to help network managers meet the requirements of their end-users, ensuring critical applications do not suffer due to network issues such as congestion at peak times.”

Belgacom identified Ipanema’s Autonomic Networking System as the best fit to meet the demands of enterprise businesses for WAN control and application performance guarantees. Ipanema’s approach offers telcos a scalable carrier class system with a dedicated service delivery framework that transcends their actual IP VPN service. This enables them to shift from a network SLA model to an application SLA model, opening opportunities for a new generation of high-value services centered around the performance of business-critical applications.

According to research carried out by analyst and consulting firm Ovum, commissioned by Ipanema in June 2008 with large enterprises in North America and Europe revealed that between 65% and 80% of respondents might be willing to pay network service providers more to improve application optimization. The areas of most interest include:

*** Improving the quality of service to guarantee performance of business critical applications; and

*** Acceleration technologies to reduce WAN bandwidth and delay constraints for business critical applications.

“According to research from Ovum, 78% of business in Europe and North America said that a performance degradation of networked applications would have a severe or major impact on their company. For many organizations the performance management tools they are using simply aren’t good enough. When you consider that the vast majority of organizations have indicated that the performance of networked applications is critical to their business operations it is clear that application traffic needs to be managed in a much more proactive and dynamic way,” said Brecht Seurinck, Country Manager for Benelux, Ipanema Technologies. “The statistics also highlight an opportunity for service providers to add value by providing traffic management and optimization services for networked applications. We are delighted to be working with Belgacom to deliver such a service and meet customers’ needs.”

About Belgacom

The Belgacom Group is Belgium’s reference provider of integrated telecommunication services. Bolstered by its long-standing experience as Belgium’s incumbent operator and its capacity for innovation, the Belgacom Group, thanks to its subsidiaries, is able to provide all its customers, regardless of their profile - whether private or professional, company or institution - with a comprehensive range of offers and solutions in fixed and mobile networks.

The Belgacom Group offers a complete quadruple-play solution that integrates fixed and mobile telephony, Internet and television. It is committed to meeting the expectations of its professional and residential customers, and innovates in order to anticipate their future needs, drawing on the latest technological developments. With a view to closing the digital gap, the Group is also committed to promoting electronic services and providing a wide range of innovative applications.

About Ipanema Technologies

Ipanema develops next-generation solutions for application traffic management and WAN optimization which drastically improve the quality of user experience. This firm’s Autonomic Networking System brings intelligence to the network enabling enterprises to dynamically align the network with their business objectives. The Autonomic Networking System, designed to manage large and very large enterprise Wide Area Networks (WANs), empowers enterprises, telecom operators and network service providers to go Beyond the Network TM. With Ipanema’s Autonomic Networking System, you can create repeatable and industrialized application-SLA based services that bring utmost benefits with the lowest Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), built on Ipanema’s intelligent visibility, intelligent optimization and intelligent acceleration. Ipanema is used extensively by many large telecom operators as well as by large multinationals across all market segments, including banking and finance, public sector, energy, pharmaceuticals, aerospace, and IT.

For more information, please visit their website; http://www.ipanematech.com