Apogee and NetReality Team to Deliver Content-Based Service Provisioning and WAN Bandwidth Management Solutions.

Business/Technology Editors

SANTA CLARA, Calif. and ROCHELLE PARK, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 6, 2000--

Companies finalize interoperability of NetCountant

and WiseWan products, announce alliance

Need to know exactly how much bandwidth one of your clients is consuming? Moreover, would you like to make various business departments accountable for the bandwidth they use, so that bandwidth consumption can be factored into each department's P&L? Today, NetReality and Apogee Networks announced a partnership that will allow enterprises to do just that-and will enable Service Providers to deliver such crucial information to customers in the form of premium services.

NetReality, the WAN-based application accelerator, and Apogee Networks, a global leader in content and usage-based billing for Service Providers (SPs) and large enterprises, announced the integration of their best-of-breed products, WiseWan(tm) and NetCountant(tm). Solutions will be available for both enterprises and SPs.

The integration will include Apogee Networks' content flow management protocol (CFMP), which is an open, standardized method for interfacing network elements to billing systems. This linkage gives customers visibility to information in their networks that was previously unavailable, or required proprietary solutions.

Corporations Gain Ultimate Control

Utilizing this integrated solution gives SPs or corporations ultimate control over the consumption and growth of their network bandwidth: WiseWan's Adaptive Circuit-based Shaping (ACS) technology enables enterprises to set and automatically enforce in real-time corporate policies regarding bandwidth usage. This enables users to ensure dominant yet low-priority protocols such as FTP do not sideline delicate ones such as voice or SAP. When integrated with WiseWan, NetCountant's usage and content-based billing applications give the corporation a means to understand exactly where WAN dollars are being spent-department-by-department, user-by-user, or via other metrics. A corporation using the integrated products would be able to take the information provided by NetCountant reports and revamp corporate policies within WiseWan to further hone bandwidth usage.

Benefits for Enterprises

Using the integrated products, enterprises can:

--Charge users for network utilization based on a wide number of parameters: For instance, costs can be assigned by client, user, department, geography, traffic volume, application type, content accessed, protocol, peak/off peak periods, etc.

--Increase WAN efficiency: WiseWan's real-time traffic shaping dramatically enhances WAN efficiency by ensuring a low-priority file transfer doesn't hog the line while a high priority SAP transaction waits in the queue, for example. Adding content-based billing on top of that functionality enhances WAN efficiency further via visibility of usage, charges for actual content, and accountability at the business level. Customers typically will see a reduction in WAN growth of 30-50% per year.

--Further hone corporate policies: The integration allows corporations to truly ensure bandwidth is being utilized to the enterprise's best interest; by providing information on WAN usage in a metric understandable at all business levels-dollars spent-WAN usage becomes real and corporate policies within WiseWan can be further honed to ensure optimal use.

"The WiseWan/NetCountant combination enables enterprises to make the most of WAN resources, then hold departments accountable for their actual consumption of the network infrastructure," says NetReality's founder, Ilan Raab. "It allows corporations to make WAN charges as easy to control and bill back as telephone charges."

Benefits for Service Providers

The integrated solution is key for Service Providers (SPs), as they can now provide their customers with all the aforementioned benefits in the form of managed services.

--Charge beyond basic usage to content: SPs need to find a way to get more granularity in their understanding and control of a customer's use of the network. Being able to charge based on actual content accessed allows for increased options in QoS management, and the potential to charge for premium services.

--Gain full value from networking investments: Billing customers based on the actual amounts of network resources consumed will boost profitability.

--Migrate away from unprofitable, flat-rate subscriptions: More flexible service- and usage-based business models become a reality with the combined NetReality/Apogee Networks solution.

--Deploy differentiated services quickly: Creating and deploying unique services in a fraction of the time will enable SPs to differentiate themselves from their competition and increase revenue and profits.

"Service Providers are stuck in a one size fits all model for solutions to their customers today," says Tom Goldman, President and COO of Apogee Networks. "By utilizing NetCountant and WiseWan solutions, SPs will be able to break free of traditional, unprofitable, flat-rate billing models by tailoring individual programs to meet the needs of individual customers."

About NetReality

NetReality is the pioneer of "application acceleration," where mission-critical applications such as SAP/R3, Citrix, CRM and Oracle are assured necessary bandwidth over critical WAN links. NetReality's WiseWan integrates real-time monitoring, dynamic traffic shaping and long-term trending to ensure best performance of voice and data over IP and legacy protocols running over Frame Relay or Leased Lines. WiseWan provides CSU/DSU functionality and enables corporations, service providers and carriers to manage Quality of Service and enforce SLAs. NetReality is based in Santa Clara, Calif. and Tel Aviv, Israel. For more information about NetReality: U.S.: 408/988-8100; Israel: 972-3-922-9585; Europe: [phone]; or email [e-mail] or visit http://www.net-reality.com.

About Apogee Networks

Headquartered in Rochelle Park, New Jersey, Apogee Networks, Inc. develops and markets a new class of "Business Aware Solutions". These solutions enable Service Providers to differentiate their services by moving away from unprofitable flat rate billing models. Enterprise customers have new visibility into the usage patterns and consumption of network resources, enabling them to better manage and leverage their information network investments, and control growth patterns and escalating costs. NetCountant received Best-of-Show at Networld+Interop. For more information about Apogee Networks, Inc., please call 888/Apogeee; or email [e-mail] or visit http://www.apogeenetworks.com.

All product and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders in the United States and/or other countries.