Convergys And NARUS Announce Strategic Alliance To Enable Highly-Scalable, Value-Based Billing And Customer Care Services.

Business Editors, High-Tech Writers

CINCINNATI--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 31, 2000

- Combined Solutions from Convergys and NARUS 

Deliver Robust Capabilities in Terms of Flexibility, Scalability,

Revenue Assurance and Customer Information Management -

Convergys Corporation, the global leader in providing integrated billing and customer care services, and NARUS, Inc., a leading provider of Internet Business Infrastructure (IBI) solutions, today announced a strategic alliance to enable value-based, billing and customer-care services that are scalable, flexible, easy to deploy, and based on comprehensive real-time usage data from the IP network.

Under the terms of the alliance, Convergys IP Billing Solutions will be integrated with NARUS' IBI Solutions to enable IP service providers to increase service differentiation as well as market innovative, usage-sensitive, value-based services along with traditional flat-rate-based offerings. Taken together, these added capabilities will help them create a competitive advantage.

The alliance facilitates the end-to-end integration of Convergys' experience and expertise in carrier-grade billing and customer care solutions with NARUS' robust IBI solutions based on NARUS' Semantic Traffic Analysis (STA) Platform. The combination will yield a sophisticated billing solution able to scale to support multi-million subscriber bases while capturing, aggregating, and rating all of a user's billable activities in real time. This will also allow IP carriers to offer premium service packages that support Quality of Service (QoS) pricing as well as other usage-based and content-sensitive services. Integrating these capabilities will allow Convergys to offer IP carriers the same level of completeness and accuracy of revenue assurance it currently provides to traditional voice carriers.

&uot;Increased competition and the rapid evolution of business models means that xSPs require flexible, scalable, end-to-end business infrastructure to adapt to change and manage growth,&uot; said Bob Marino, president of Convergys' Information Management Group. &uot;This makes Convergys' carrier-grade services especially attractive to service providers that recognize the need to focus their resources on their unique, differentiated services. At the same time, real-time access to customer usage information, which is provided by NARUS' IBI solutions, has become critical for service providers to develop, price, and deploy these services.&uot;

&uot;NARUS and Convergys are both working toward helping our customers to meet the challenges of the highly-competitive IP services marketplace,&uot; said Mark Stone, NARUS' president and COO. &uot;We're extremely pleased to partner with a global leader such as Convergys. They will be a valuable partner in delivering the complete Internet Business Infrastructure solutions that our mutual customers need.&uot;

&uot;This is an excellent move for Convergys and yet another feather in the cap of NARUS,&uot; said Bill Hills, senior analyst with Aberdeen Group. &uot;Convergys customers will be very attracted to the valuable added dimension of state-of-the-art real-time usage analysis.&uot;

Convergys and NARUS are charter members of the IPDR (Internet Protocol Detail Record) Working Group, whose purpose is to develop key Internet usage billing standards that will be submitted to accredited standards bodies. The Convergys-NARUS solution-set will comply with IPDR standards as a means of providing consistent data format for all next-generation billing systems. Convergys and NARUS are jointly participating in the IPDR demonstration at OSS 2000 Conference currently underway in Orlando.

ABOUT NARUS

NARUS, the leading provider of Internet business infrastructure (IBI) solutions, gives IP service providers the flexibility to implement and manage new services and business models profitably, and at will. NARUS' solutions are based on the company's Semantic Traffic Analysis (STA) technology that captures comprehensive customer usage data directly from carrier-grade networks and transforms it into actionable information. The patent-pending STA technology, which is the only technology that provides complete visibility for all Internet applications, is the foundation for applications that range from decision support to IP billing mediation. NARUS is a founding member of the Internet Protocol Detail Record (IPDR) initiative, along with AT&, TeleStrategies, and many others. Privately held and based in Palo Alto, CA, NARUS investors include Frontier Internet Ventures, Inc., a subsidiary of Frontier Communications (NYSE: FRO), MediaOne Ventures, a division of MediaOne Group (NYSE:UMG), Mayfield Fund, Walden Ventures, Chase Capital, and others. The company's web address is http://www.narus.com

ABOUT CONVERGYS

Convergys Corporation (NYSE:CVG) is the global leader in providing outsourced, integrated, customer care and billing services, bringing together world-class resources and expertise to help clients transform customer relationships into a competitive advantage.

Convergys software produces more than one million bills each day, and Convergys call centers handle more than one million calls each day.

Convergys (SM) provides customer care, billing and employee care services to the top companies in a wide range of industries, including communications, Internet, cable and broadband services, technology, consumer products, financial services, utilities, healthcare and hospitality.

Headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, Convergys employs over 41,000 people in its 36 call centers and in its data centers and other offices in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Convergys is on the Internet at www.convergys.com

Convergys is pronounced: kun VER jis. Convergys and the Convergys logo are service marks of Convergys Corporation.