Abiliti Solutions Introduces EventProcessor.

Business Editors

ST. LOUIS, Mo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 7, 2001

Offering unmatched performance, flexibility and the lowest total

cost of ownership in one powerful rating engine

Abiliti Solutions, an industry-leading provider of billing solutions, service and expertise for network service providers, today introduced EventProcessor(TM) offering unmatched performance, flexibility and the lowest total cost of ownership in one powerful rating engine.

The system can be purchased as part of a unified system with Abiliti Solutions' site license or service bureau billing solutions. In addition, it can be purchased as a stand-alone product when providers need real-time rating to complement their existing billing application.

In a recently completed series of performance optimization tests, conducted at the Compaq benchmarking lab in Houston, Abiliti Solutions proved that the system can process and rate in excess of 62 million complex Call Detail Records (CDRs) an hour, setting a new performance standard in the telecom industry. This benchmark demonstrates the ability to consistently process a traffic volume of more than 13.6 billion calls or Internet Protocol Detail Record events per month, based on a conservative ten-hour, 22 days per month processing window.

"We are excited with the benchmarking results that prove the effectiveness of our EventProcessor on the Microsoft Windows 2000 platform with SQL Server 2000," said Gordon Quick, president and CEO of Abiliti Solutions.

"The EventProcessor is truly scalable, but still gives providers control over business rule changes without the need to involve developers," said Quick. With the EventProcessor, providers can simply use point-and-click graphic user interface tool to define their own business rules, quickly and easily, or they can use the standard rule libraries built into the system. From simple to complex charging structures, the system can be set up to rate based on any unit of measure, from multi-charge calculations within a single tariff, to multi-currency rating."

The system was built using a "least cost of ownership" model. The ability to consistently process as many as 62 million CDRs per hour on the industry's most cost-efficient platform delivers the best price performance in the marketplace, compared to UNIX or mainframe-based solutions.

"Delivering an unmatched combination of performance, flexibility and lowest total cost of ownership in one software product is rare," said Quick. "But, most importantly, it creates a significant competitive advantage for network service providers."

"Unlike other solutions, we were able to achieve this level of performance, flexibility and affordability without sacrificing even the slightest bit of scalability," adds Quick. "Which means, we can support the complex rating requirements of today's most advanced network service providers, regardless of their size or unique suite of service offerings."

The EventProcessor's tremendously scalable architecture allows users to start from a small customer base and increase capacity in low-cost steps as business grows. The system is designed to easily scale up to large multi-processor arrays and to scale out to clusters of smaller machines.

"The ability to offer both scaling techniques was a major factor in developing our EventProcessor," said Quick. "Given the rate of change the industry has seen in recent years - the addition of IP and other next generation services, more services per user, mergers and acquisitions - providers need the ability to ramp up from a few thousand records to several million in a very short timeframe."

About the benchmarking:

The benchmark test was executed utilizing the full functional components of Abiliti Solutions' EventProcessor. The test used standard Exchange Message Interface call records from a sample set of one million customers. Each record passed through stages that reformat, validate against industry standard cross-reference tables, check for duplicates, associate customer and rate plan details, and compute charges. The rated record was then stored into a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database.

The complex rating algorithm used in the test employed a traditional long distance tariff incorporating mileage sensitive, geographic (inter/intra-LATA and international) and time-sensitive (day, evening, night and weekday, weekend, holiday) elements.

The test environment consisted of three Compaq ProLiant 8500 Servers each with eight Pentium 550 MHz processors and an external Compaq Storage Works disk array configuration, running Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server operating system and an SQL Server 2000 RDBMS. Monthly traffic volume estimates are based on the CDR per hour benchmark, assuming ten hours per day of processing over twenty-two business days per month.

"I think our customers will be very happy with the benchmark because it underscores the fact that our solution can address their most critical rating needs now and for many years in the future," added Quick.

About Abiliti Solutions

Abiliti Solutions brings network service providers a better way to manage their billing - whether they choose a traditional site license through our NetworkStrategies(R) billing application suite; our BillingCentral(TM) "hands-free" approach through our own Billing ASP; or our industry-leading EventProcessor(TM). Our solutions give network service providers the ability to adapt to a dynamic marketplace, the freedom to focus on growing their business and the lowest total cost of ownership. Abiliti Solutions is a privately held company headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. For more information visit www.abilitisolutions.com.