Woodland
Hills, Calif., November December 08, 1999 – Vertel® (NASDAQ:
VRTL), a leading global provider of carrier-grade network
management solutions announced the release of e*ORB, the first
commercially available Object Request Broker (ORB) optimized
specifically for the telecommunications industry. e*ORB represents
Vertel's next generation of advanced object management solutions
designed to enable Operations Supports Systems (OSSs) to perform
distributed computing within rigorous and demanding
telecommunications network environments. First shipments of e*ORB
took place in late September 1999 and implementation of the
platform by a number of Vertel customers is currently underway.
e*ORB is the first ORB to offer the interoperability benefits
of Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA), one of the
most widely deployed middleware frameworks in enterprise
computing, with the carrier-grade performance, reliability and
scalability required to develop and deploy integrated
voice/data/video services over optical, IP and wireless networks.
"e*ORB is the evolution of Vertel's carrier-grade
middleware solutions," said Bruce Brown, president and CEO of
Vertel Corporation. "Our highly optimized ORB will enable
equipment manufacturers and network management systems designers
to deliver network devices that have built-in intelligence and
real time connectivity to the network. e*ORB is engineered for
faster, more simplified and lower cost implementation, which will
dramatically speed time to market for our customers."
Tellium Chooses e*ORB
"We found e*ORB to be an ideal solution for managing
communications in our high-capacity optical switches," said
Nicholas DeVito, Director of Marketing and Product Management for
Tellium, the leading vendor of advanced optical networking
technology. "e*ORB has the flexibility we need to deliver the
scalability and survivability our carrier customers require; and
the implementation simplified our development environment."
Vertel's focus on distributed processing for telecom network
management is driven by the growing desire to accelerate the
deployment of next generation network technology to deliver
broadband access/transport and third generation wireless services.
Companies taking early interest in e*ORB include RTOS vendors,
advanced optical switch vendors, and broadband wireless, handheld
device and set-top box manufacturers.
Lynx Teams Up with Vertel
"Lynx teamed up with Vertel to provide the first
commercial implementation of e*ORB to run on the LynxOS(R)
platform because e*ORB's real-time performance, scalability and
adherence to open standards are the same value propositions of the
LynxOS," said Bill Hogan, President and CEO, Lynx Real-Time
Systems(R), Inc. "Looking forward, we'll work together to
provide additional carrier-grade e*ORB solutions, that run on the
LynxOS and BlueCat(tm) operating systems, for manufacturers of
next-generation infrastructure equipment."
e*ORB Meets Minimum CORBA Specifications
Unique among existing ORB platforms, e*ORB is compliant with the
MinimumCORBA specification, and can be extended to incorporate
CORBA features as required by the telecom market. This scalability
allows e*ORB to be embedded into a wide variety of network devices
ranging from high-capacity optical switches and terabit routers to
high-end handheld devices and set-top boxes. Within a network
management architecture, e*ORB can provide interoperability
between network elements and applications such as dynamic
provisioning, billing and customer care. At the element level,
e*ORB can be embedded into the various processors within a network
device to streamline internal communications and enhance standard
management processes, making e*ORB a readily available,
"off-the-shelf" alternative to developing proprietary
solutions.
Carrier-grade CORBA for Convergent Networks
"Object management is a logical evolution in network
management environments as packet and circuit networks
converge," said Verne Anton, a telecommunications industry
analyst for Dataquest, a San Jose, Calif.-based market research
and consulting firm. "Vertel has shown considerable
innovation and market leadership in delivering an ORB that is
uniquely designed for telecommunications. The scalability of
Vertel's ORB makes it a solid solution for enabling carrier-grade
distributed processing throughout the network from the device
level to high-level service applications."
e*ORB key benefits include:
High performance -- real-time processing with the ability to
handle large volumes of management data. e*ORB has been
benchmarked against industry-leading ORBs and has demonstrated an
improvement of almost 50% in marshalling speed over the previous
leader, an improvement of almost 80% in throughput volume over
its closest competitor and the absolute lowest latency of any ORB
tested
Low memory footprint -- ideal for smaller, low-power CPUs found on
mobile devices
Pluggable protocol framework (PPF) -- allows e*ORB to operate in a
wide variety of environments including GIOP over UDP, ATM, IrDA
and TCP/IP (IIOP). Multi-protocol support leverages the Quality of
Service of native transports to achieve carrier-grade reliability
and eliminates the need for a separate signaling channel for
management, which helps lower cost of operations.
Portability -- operation in a broad range of popular telecom
operating environments, such as LynxOS, VxWorks, Linux,
PalmOS, WinCE, WindowsNT.
e*ORB's telecom-specific services include fault tolerance,
notification, directory services and mobility. In addition, e*ORB
can be readily customized. Its microkernel can be extended with
standard CORBA features or supplemented with OMG named services.
The same kernel can also be given application-specific
modifications, transforming it into a special-purpose Intelligent
Network Agent (INA). INAs can be configured to perform specialized
tasks such as handling critical alarms, to service a specific
vendor's proprietary protocol implementation, or to implement an
application-specific or domain-specific equipment interface.
e*ORB will also facilitate the development of next generation
network applications. "Our new embedded ORB technology has
extensive applicability in the burgeoning IP telecom marketplace
from service breakthroughs such as on-demand provisioning to
leading-edge applications such as extending enterprise-level
inventory or sales force automation programs to mobile
platforms," said Brown.
Vertel Leverages Technology Expertise And Strategic
Partnerships To Develop e*ORB
Leveraging its strong experience and reputation in the
telecommunications industry, Vertel engaged expertise from
numerous sectors to bring e*ORB to market. e*ORB represents the
marriage of Vertel's ten years of expertise and leadership in
developing network management solutions with the extensive CORBA
development knowledge it acquired with Expersoft. "It is
extremely gratifying to know that our strategy in acquiring this
domain expertise has enhanced Vertel's interoperability solutions
by bringing carrier grade performance, scalability and reliability
to next generation management systems," said Brown. e*ORB was
designed in collaboration with Sprint ION.
Vertel has also worked closely with industry standards groups
such as the Object Management Group (OMG), TINA-C and the
Telemanagement Forum (TMF) as well as members of academia,
including researchers from Washington University, to develop
precise specifications, specialized services and rigorous
benchmark testing to make e*ORB a fully CORBA-compliant solution
that is optimized for telecom.
About Vertel Corporation
Vertel is a leading global provider of carrier-grade, broadband
Internet software infrastructure and management solutions. Vertel
offers a wide range of technologies and applications, supporting
end-to-end network and service management with the highest quality
of service for network operations. Vertel's solutions are deployed
worldwide by service providers, network operators, software
vendors, and systems integrators. Vertel also delivers turnkey
management applications that fit individual customer requirements
through its Professional Services organization. The company is
based in Woodland Hills and has sales offices throughout the
world. Contact Vertel on the World Wide Web at http://www.vertel.com.
About Tellium
Tellium designs and manufactures networking products that create
intelligent optical networks. These products are utilized by large
communications companies because today's public networks are
struggling to support the explosion of bandwidth requirements for
data services. Tellium products create a scalable optical network
enabling reliable, fast, low-cost delivery of data services.
Tellium's Aurora 32 Optical Switch was the first-to-market in the
telecommunications industry. Aurora 32 with the larger Aurora 512,
StarNet Restoration Software and the Gemini Element Management
System are the cornerstone network elements of scalable, flexible
optical networks. More information about Tellium can be found at www.tellium.com.
About Lynx Real-Time Systems
An ISO 9001 registered company, Lynx Real-Time Systems, Inc. is a
worldwide supplier of embedded software products including
scalable real-time operating systems, development tools and
support. These products provide a software foundation for high
availability applications in telecommunications, data
communications, avionics, automotive, office automation and
process control systems. Dedicated to industry standards such as
POSIX, JAVA and CompactPCI, the company enables customers to
leverage their investments in software and education. Lynx holds
two patents for real-time software and has three patents pending.
Founded in 1988, Lynx is a privately held company with offices in
North America, Europe and Japan, with worldwide headquarters in
San Jose, Calif. Information about Lynx Real-Time Systems is
available on the World Wide Web at www.lynx.com.
