Cisco Info Center Solution Enables Rapid Deployment of Outsourced Services.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 29, 2002

Heightened Service Management Capabilities Strengthen Relationship

between Service Providers and their Enterprise Customers through

Improved SLA Management and Execution

Cisco Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CSCO), the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet, today announced a new Cisco Info Center(R) (CIC) solution with enhanced service management and service delivery capabilities designed to speed the roll-out of new services, lower the cost of deploying those services, and reduce overall operational costs. Cisco teamed with Micromuse Inc. (Nasdaq:MUSE), the leading provider of service and business assurance software, to bring this solution to market. The solution brings service providers and their enterprise customers closer together through greater service management flexibility and performance.

Enabling fast and efficient deployment, the CIC solution helps advance the adoption of emerging networking technologies and the services they enable such as IP Telephony, VPN, Security, Optical Networking, Content Delivery, Storage, and Wireless. Service providers can utilize the new solution to differentiate their service portfolios and increase profitability through new revenue streams. The new solution provides an end-to-end view of the network infrastructure, increased functionality between management layers down to the network devices, and partitioned network views for specific customer services.

By partitioning and managing services for their customers, service providers are able to better maintain availability, usability, and performance metrics defined in Service Level Agreements (SLAs), reducing overall operational costs. With the partitioned network view, enterprise customers are now able to directly monitor the performance of their services in real time via secure extranet portals, offered on a 24/7 basis by the service provider, helping ensure quick economic return and improved service reliability.

Cisco Info Center, based on Micromuse's Netcool(R) suite, is at the core of the solution, and has been successfully delivered to service provider and enterprise customers worldwide. The CIC suite allows service providers on Cisco Powered Networks to provide pre-packaged, on-demand services as part of their outsourced offerings. The CIC service delivery model is easily extended across partitions, allowing service providers to rapidly roll out business services to multiple customers simultaneously.

The solution has already been successfully deployed at service providers such as Cogent Communications. Cogent's signature service offered to commercial end-users of always on access at 100 Mbps for $1,000 per month, offers 65 times the bandwidth of a T-1 connection at up to two-thirds of the cost. Cogent's Cisco Powered Network uses ring redundancy and protected optronics to ensure survivability and availability. The metropolitan area network rings on Cogent's network are provisioned and configured to enable Cogent to offer each customer a fully dedicated, non-oversubscribed 100-Mbps connection that is not shared with anyone else. This unique network partitioning approach, coupled with the service assurance of Cisco Info Center, ensures every customer quality of service and SLAs that exceed the industry standard. The Cogent solution makes ultra-high speed Internet access an affordable reality for small and medium-sized businesses, as well as large enterprises and service providers.

"The CIC service delivery model is helping us meet our customers' expectations and exceed SLAs for performance and availability. Because of CIC, our customers have been surprised at our level of customer service," said Neale D'Rozario, Chief Information Officer at Cogent Communications. "One such customer, The Fantastic Company, has gone so far as to say `For several weeks after the installation, we experienced periodic electrical problems within our office space that caused our network hardware to go down. Within minutes of an internal power outage, a Cogent network support technician would notify us and offer their assistance regarding the network outage even though the trouble was not with the Cogent network. They would often call before we even realized that anything had taken place. This was especially impressive since our previous service provider would take weeks to return our phone calls regarding their network outages.' Our implementation of CIC has had an immediate, measurable impact on our business and our customers' business."

"Service providers have made substantial investments in their IP infrastructures and, of course, are looking for the highest return on that investment," said Bill Nuti, Cisco's Senior Vice President US Theater Operations and Worldwide Service Provider Operations. "They'll achieve this return by providing the next wave of high margin, profitable IP services and by hosting business functions that enterprises are looking to out task. With the CIC service assurance technology, we can enable this symbiotic relationship, helping both service providers and enterprises to transform their businesses."

"We work closely with our service provider and enterprise customers every day, and they are both aiming to move beyond the traditional outsourcing model of providing network transport, bundled voice, and layered data services," said Greg Brown, Micromuse's Chairman & Chief Executive Officer. "We can help both parties gain market share and generate revenue by allowing them to differentiate their service offerings and deploy services dramatically quicker. With this CIC solution, we are helping service providers cope with the behind-the-scenes heavy lifting required to build long-term relationships with their enterprise customers."

The CIC technology renews and enhances service providers' relationships with their enterprise customers by speeding up the roll-out of new services, lowering the cost of deploying those services and reducing the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). This service delivery model allows post-implementation costs to be outsourced to the service provider, increasing service providers' ongoing revenues and profits, while enabling enterprise customers to focus on their core business objectives. Micromuse is a partner in Cisco's Joint Development Program (JDP). Cisco and Micromuse have been JDP partners since 1997.

About Cisco Info Center

Cisco System's Cisco Info Center (CIC) software is comprised of components licensed from Micromuse, as well as, extensions developed jointly between Cisco and Micromuse. It provides businesses with the assurance that their networks, services and applications are working. CIC allows service providers and enterprises to see what's happening throughout the infrastructure in realtime and enables them to respond to problems before they cause network-based business services to go down. CIC installs out-of-the-box, deploys rapidly and scales as networks grow. CIC includes a library of off-the-shelf software modules that allows our customers to collect and consolidate fault information from more than 300 popular environments spanning IP, voice, cable/broadband, switches and routers, and enterprise management systems.

About Cisco Systems

Cisco Systems (Nasdaq:CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet. Cisco news and information are available at http://www.cisco.com.

Cisco, Cisco Systems, the Cisco Systems logo, and Cisco IOS are registered trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. in the U.S. and certain other countries. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners. Micromuse and Netcool are registered trademarks of Micromuse Ltd. All other trademarks and registered trademarks in this document are the properties of their respective owners. Any statements contained in this press release that do not describe historical facts may constitute forward-looking statements as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any forward-looking statements contained herein are based on current expectations, but are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties.