NEWS BRIEFS

Mountain View, CALIF. — Optical networks are the fundamental infrastructure for the next-generation Internet, and it’s clear that many of these new networks will be managed using graphical user interfaces (GUIs) from ILOG. ILOG JTGO, ILOG JViews Component Suite and ILOG Views, have been selected for operator interfaces in optical networking equipment from Alcatel, Alidian, Calient Networks, Centerpoint Broadband Technologies, CIENA Corp., ONI Systems and Redback Networks. In addition, Geyser Networks has selected ILOG JTGO for its new MetroView Network Management System, unveiled this week at the National Fiber Optic Engineering Conference (NFOEC) in Denver.

This announcement of eight new contracts follows a February announcement that six other leading optical network equipment companies, BrightLink/Corvia, Ironbridge Networks, Nortel Networks, Sycamore Networks and Tellium, had selected ILOG GUIs for their network and/or element management systems.

MetroView NMS is part of Geyser Networks’ new Optical Services Manager/OSM 4800 metro optical switching platform. ILOG JTGO will be used to graphically depict and manage the complex network topology of OSM 4800. “The optical network presentation layer is very complex and calls for a really sophisticated graphical user interface product to take all that information and present it in a clean, manageable format. We also needed a product we could deploy quickly,” said Gordon Lee, vice president of engineering, Geyser Networks. “The strengths of the ILOG product were its fast deployment capability and ability to graphically present the complex optical network topology, involving the management of virtually hundreds of network elements.”

Alidian, which selected ILOG GUIs for its Alidian Alluminate Network Management System (NMS) and Alluminate Planner products, echoed the need for sophisticated GUIs to manage complex optical networks: “We designed our software to ease the design and provisioning of optical networks – networks that include many protocols and services traveling over multiple wavelengths on a single optical fiber,” said Dr. Dave Newman, Alidian founder and vice president of engineering. “Extending ease of use, ILOG GUIs enabled our engineers to represent these complex designs with easy-to-understand and easy-to-visualize graphical representations.”

“ILOG visualization tools have become a de facto industry standard for GUIs in traditional networked environments, and appear poised to have similar success in the optical networking market,” said Rob Rich, executive vice president at the Yankee Group.

Optical networks are being adopted to add capacity to existing network equipment and enable next-generation high-speed Internet services. Optical networking equipment can multiply the efficiency of existing fiber optic equipment – up to a million-fold, by some estimates – while using existing infrastructure and equipment. Optical networking companies require sophisticated visualization tools to help them deploy and manage their networks efficiently by helping network operators become more productive in increasingly complex networked environments.

ILOG JTGO (Java version of Telecom Graphic Objects) and ILOG JViews are embeddable Java 2D components that ease the development of interactive, intuitive GUIs. These GUIs allow operators to focus only on the relevant data in the network, see the global picture of the network in a shorter period of time, and anticipate problems before they occur. Using these visualization software components from ILOG, equipment providers can slash the development time and cost of these interfaces by as much as 50 percent, supercharging new product development and deployment.

ILOG’s visualization and optimization software components are used by the world’s largest telecommunications companies, including Alcatel, Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, France Telecom, Lucent Technologies, MCI WorldCom, Nokia, Nortel, Siemens and Telefonica. These companies use ILOG’s products to rapidly develop network management, resource optimization and customer care and billing applications. Visit http://www.ilog.com for more information.

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