Appian Communications Opens Asia Pacific Headquarters, Appoints Tom Ma Vice President and Managing Director.

Business/Technology Editors

ACTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 6, 2001

Appian Communications(TM), the first to enable the delivery of carrier-class Ethernet services that leverage existing SONET/SDH networks, today expanded its presence into the Asia Pacific telecommunications market with the opening of its Asia Pacific sales and support headquarters in Hong Kong. Established to meet carrier demand for solutions that enable the revenue and profit potential of Ethernet services, the Hong Kong office will be led by industry veteran Tom Ma, Appian's newly appointed vice president and managing director of Asia Pacific. Mr. Ma comes to Appian with a proven track record in bringing market-leading solutions to both established and emerging carriers in the Asia Pacific region.

"Ethernet services represent a significant opportunity for carriers to generate new service revenues, and the Appian solution is exactly what established providers, new carriers and second fixed license operators are looking for. Appian's solution offers a distinct business proposition, with the ability to reduce capital and operating costs while it leverages the transport and back office systems already in place," said Mr. Ma. "By enabling a broad suite of Ethernet services that feature carrier-class reliability and scale, Appian is in an excellent position to help carriers meet their pressing revenue and profitability objectives. I'm very excited to bring this compelling solution to carriers throughout the region."

Mr. Ma brings over 18 years of experience in developing successful telecommunications sales and support teams throughout Asia Pacific to his new position at Appian. As the former vice president and managing director of Asia Pacific for DSL vendor Pairgain Technologies (acquired by ADC Telecommunications), Mr. Ma built the organization to its position as the dominant DSL supplier across the region. Prior to Pairgain, he was a key member of the Newbridge Networks Asia Pacific team that established the company as the leading supplier of TDM, ATM, and Frame Relay products in the region. At British Telecom, he served as the general manager of network service operations for the Concert Global Network, the joint venture between British Telecom and MCI. In his new role, Mr. Ma will be responsible for building the sales and support team, establishing key partnerships, and expanding Appian's presence across the Asia Pacific region.

"The Asia Pacific market is clearly an important part of Appian's business strategy. Carriers throughout the region are ready to capitalize on significant fiber investments by deploying next-generation services that include premium Ethernet private lines, scalable Internet access and Transparent LAN Services," said Mick Scully, co-founder and CEO of Appian. "We are very pleased to have someone of Tom's caliber join Appian to drive the company's expansion into this rapidly growing region."

OSAP Enables Broadest Range of Premium Ethernet Services

Optimized for the delivery of next-generation carrier-class Ethernet services, Appian's Optical Services Activation Platform(TM) (OSAP(TM)) enables the migration to high-revenue packet services with new levels of service profitability. Positioned at the customer-to-carrier network edge, the OSAP provides an evolutionary path from traditional TDM services to new packet services that combine the simplicity and low cost of Ethernet as a service interface to the customer with the resilience, manageability and scale of existing SONET/SDH infrastructures.

OSAP-enabled services can extend from fully secure, guaranteed-rate Ethernet Private Lines to more cost effective, best effort Internet access. Any service can be rapidly, remotely software provisioned to offer a Guaranteed Bit Rate (GBR) and/or Maximum Burst Rate (MBR) that scales from 1 Mbps to 1 Gigabit Ethernet in granular 64 Kbps increments. The OSAP's packet service flexibility enables the industry's broadest range of point-to-point and multipoint Ethernet services, including secure, Layer 2 Virtual Private Networks that can span wide area networks with explicit bandwidth guarantees. Its patent-pending QoS and protocol mediation capabilities enable further service differentiation with the ability to deliver multiple, SLA-guaranteed services through a single Ethernet interface. As a result, customers can migrate to more bandwidth or new services without costly hardware upgrades or slow, manual service intervention.

Based on the OSAP's packet-optimized, QoS-enabled architecture, carriers can realize a greater than 70% reduction in transport costs with even greater operational savings as they leverage existing SONET/SDH transport and back office investments. And this standards-based solution is designed to plug-and-play with existing SONET/SDH networks making it truly carrier class with respect to service manageability and scale.

About Appian Communications

Appian is removing the final bottleneck to optical service revenues, providing an optical edge solution optimized for the migration from traditional TDM services to high-growth packet services. Designed to create new service revenues with increased profitability, Appian's award-winning Optical Services Activation Platform (OSAP(TM)) and AppianVista(TM) Services and Element Manager bring Ethernet economics, packet switching flexibility and QoS control to traditional SONET/SDH networks. With its integrated TDM support, the OSAP also offers a migration path from today's rigid, circuit-optimized voice and data offerings to a new generation of carrier-class Ethernet services that include Ethernet Private Lines, Ethernet Virtual Private Networks, and scaleable Ethernet Internet Access. Recognized as a 2001 Hot 100 Private Company by UPSIDE Magazine, Appian is marketing its products to emerging and existing providers around the world. For more information about Appian Communications, please visit its Web site at www.appiancom.com.

Appian Communications, Appian, the Appian logo, Intelligent Optical Edge, Opening Optical Networks for Business, Optical Services Activation Platform, OSAP, Optical Data Protection, ODP and AppianVista are trademarks or services marks of Appian Communications, Inc. All other company, product or service names mentioned herein may be the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.