Appian Communications Enables Pay-As-You-Grow Migration to Carrier-Class Ethernet Services; New Products Extend Services to Small-to-Medium Business Establishments.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

ACTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 12, 2003

Appian Communications(TM) today announced new products that change the economics, scalability and breadth of services available as carriers migrate Small and Medium Business (SMB) establishments from legacy TDM to high-bandwidth, carrier-class Ethernet services. Optimized for simplicity and low cost, the company's new Services Termination Units (STU) are managed customer/carrier demarcation devices that are right-sized to extend full bandwidth Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet and native TDM services to SMB, low-density building, and remote office sites. At the same time, the company announced new software and hardware for its flagship Optical Service Activation Platform (OSAP), supporting the efficient aggregation and grooming of STU-delivered services onto a provider's existing SONET/SDH and/or IP services backbone.

Based on a simple, "pay as you grow" service delivery architecture, Appian's comprehensive metro access solution allows providers to cost effectively extend a rich suite of carrier-quality Ethernet and TDM services beyond the large enterprise to now include the mass SMB market.

"Cable MSOs are a great example of service providers who will benefit from Appian's "success-based" pay as you grow model for delivering commercial grade voice and data services," said Michael Howard, principal analyst and cofounder of Infonetics Research. "The availability of the STU and the ADC partnership together open an important growth market opportunity for Appian," continued Howard. (Please see related ADC (NASDAQ: ADCT) and Appian Communications partnership announcement, dated May 12.)

"Cable MSOs are ahead of the game in deploying fiber into or near their small and mid-sized business customer sites," said Pirjo Tuomi, VP sales and marketing for ADC's IP Cable business unit. "This creates a ready opportunity to deliver commercial quality voice and data services to these business customers," continued Tuomi. "The Appian STU is a natural fit as it enables the migration to resilient, business grade services that include high bandwidth Internet access, Virtual Private Networks (VPN), and Ethernet Private Line," said Tuomi.

"Until now, service providers have been forced to deploy relatively expensive SONET/SDH ADMs to deliver TDM and Ethernet services with carrier-grade manageability," stated Anand Parikh, VP of product management and business development, Appian Communications. "These solutions have offered limited Ethernet performance and capabilities," continued Parikh. "Appian's STU solution changes this picture by packing over four times the bandwidth with full OAM&P capabilities into a tiny package that enables a payback period of less than six months," concluded Parikh.

Services Scale One Customer, One Service At A Time

Right-sized for entry into small and mid-sized buildings, the STU is offered in a series of fixed configuration, 1 Rack Unit (RU) platforms that include a mix of DS1/E1, 10/100 Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet user interfaces. With support for both Ethernet and TDM services over a single fiber pair, the STU enables cost effective migration to new, higher bandwidth services one customer, one service at a time.

"First customer" costs are managed with support for back-to-back, single site-at-a-time STU deployments. As a service area grows, the OSAP's new STU Termination Card (STC) allows downstream STUs to be aggregated into OSAP 4800 or 1600 platforms located at a service provider Central Office (CO), headend or hub facility. The full suite of OSAP-enabled Ethernet Private Line, Virtual Private LAN and Frame Relay/ATM/IP access services are available to remote users with a payback that can be achieved in a matter of months.

Unlike the enterprise-optimized Ethernet switches often deployed as customer located equipment, the STU provides carrier-grade service availability via an optionally redundant Gigabit Ethernet uplink with full support for IEEE 802.3ah Ethernet in the First Mile (EFM) OAM&P. This comprehensive management, fault isolation and recovery solution is critical to reducing the cost and time to restore services over the first mile connection to the customer. In addition, unlike traditional Ethernet switches, the STU provides full support for TDM services.

Network integration is also simplified as STU services are efficiently groomed by the OSAP onto a provider's SONET/SDH and/or IP services backbone. The result is a scalable architecture for delivering services to small and mid-sized establishments that optimizes total cost of ownership while protecting investments in existing transport and back office systems.

Appian also announced CWDM support for the STU, enabling a resilient, fiber-efficient architecture for distributing commercial quality voice and data services to multiple downstream business sites. Unlike traditional PON architectures, which lose bandwidth and power as the fiber is split across multiple user sites, the Appian solution allows multiple business sites to share a single fiber pair, each with a dedicated, secure wavelength. A completely passive solution, Appian's CWDM access architecture can be deployed in a redundant point-to-point configuration as well as a more fiber-efficient resilient ring topology.

About Appian Communications

Appian's award winning metro access solution extends the industry's most comprehensive suite of carrier-class Ethernet and TDM services to a broad footprint of small, medium, and large business establishments. Built for service migration, the Appian solution is based on a hybrid packet/TDM architecture that optimizes carrier investments in existing services, transport and back office systems. By bringing the simplicity of Ethernet, advanced QoS and service interworking to existing SONET/SDH networks, the Appian solution is enabling the migration to resilient, carrier-quality services that include Ethernet Private Lines, Layer 2 Virtual Private Networks (L2 VPN), Virtual Private LANs and high bandwidth Frame Relay/ATM Access. Appian products are currently shipping to emerging and established service providers, including NTT Communications, around the world. For more information, please visit www.appiancom.com.

Appian Communications, etc. are trademarks of Appian Communications, Inc. All other company, product or service names mentioned herein may be the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.