Highlander and Trigon Partner to Accelerate Integration of CORBA-based Network Management into Next Generation Communications Equipment.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

Embedded Systems Conference 2000

Booth no.8030

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 25, 2000

(Embedded Systems Conference) Highlander Engineering and Trigon Technology Group announced today that Trigon has integrated its OM2000(TM) Management Application Development Toolkit with the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA(R)) compliant VisiBroker(TM) for Embedded Systems middleware solution from Highlander. The combination of OM2000 and VisiBroker provides communications equipment developers with a turnkey set of tools and run-time facilities that automate and accelerate the development of network management agents that support an industry-standard CORBA interface.

Note: OM2000 integrated with VisiBroker is being demonstrated at the Embedded Systems Conference in the Trigon booth, no.8030.

Ken Black, president of Highlander, remarked: "Next generation communications equipment developers, end-users and industry organizations have embraced CORBA as a network management standard. CORBA provides the object orientation and protocol support that is required to efficiently model and manage complex, leading-edge technologies such as optical, wireless, Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), Digital Subscriber Line (DSL), Voice over IP and multimedia. Many of our customers have created their own CORBA-based management solutions; by taking advantage of OM2000, VisiBroker users can significantly accelerate their time-to-market."

"With the convergence of the telecommunications and data communications worlds, both equipment manufacturers and carriers have found CORBA to be a unifying solution to their historically discrete set of management protocols," commented Alex Kuo, chairman and CEO of Trigon. "A major benefit of OM2000 is that it facilitates migration to CORBA by allowing developers to re-use existing management specifications and to concurrently support multiple management interfaces. By integrating OM2000 with VisiBroker, the most widely used embedded CORBA implementation, we are further easing CORBA adoption by reducing the amount of customization and testing required of customers. In addition, OM2000 users can now leverage the many CORBA optimizations and extensions VisiBroker provides."

"CORBA was clearly the most flexible management interface for our UAP 2000(TM) Universal Access Platform," according to Gin-Pao Lu, Director of Software at ANDA Networks. "CORBA is a frequent customer requirement and it also efficiently supports management of the T1, DSL, frame relay and Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) technologies integrated in UAP 2000. To develop our management application, we used OM2000 together with VisiBroker and Trigon engineering services. We believe this solution provided us with the best time-to-market and will allow us to easily support new services in the future."

OM2000

OM2000 automates and accelerates the development of CORBA-based and multi-protocol network management agents. OM2000 includes development tools and run-time libraries that provide most of the implementation-independent functionality required by a CORBA agent; developers are only responsible for implementing application-specific managed objects. OM2000 development tools generate the CORBA interface from management information models defined using GDMO or the Unified Modeling Language(TM) (UML(TM)). Because OM2000 agents are built on a scalable framework that allows CORBA and other management interfaces to share the same managed object implementations, additional protocols such as SNMP, the Common Management Information Protocol (CMIP), TL1 and custom command-line interfaces can be added without requiring changes to pre-existing agent source code.

VisiBroker

In addition to providing a CORBA interface for OM2000, VisiBroker can be used to accelerate development of the non-management components of device software. Most communications equipment applications contain tens to thousands of internal processors. VisiBroker provides an object-oriented approach to distributed processing that significantly eases development by hiding the details of interprocessor communication and underlying system architecture. Since internal communications often rely on custom, high-performance protocols, VisiBroker does not depend on TCP/IP and can take advantage of other transport mechanisms. VisiBroker also provides Real-Time CORBA support, allowing it to be used in cases where deterministic performance is required. High-availability features insure VisiBroker is suitable for carrier-grade equipment.

Pricing and Availability

OM2000 integrated with VisiBroker is now generally available from Trigon for customers using the VxWorks(R) and pSOS(R) real-time operating systems. In North America, development licenses for OM2000 start at USD $75,000. VisiBroker for Embedded Systems is available from Highlander. VisiBroker North American development license pricing begins at USD $9,600, which includes one year of technical support and software updates.

Trigon

Trigon Technology Group, Inc., is a leader in providing tools for object-oriented, distributed management applications. Trigon was founded in 1997 to address the communications industry's need to migrate to standards-based network management capabilities that support the convergence of voice and data communications networks. Trigon clients include leading global communications equipment manufacturers and dynamic startup companies, addressing the Next Generation Network market opportunity. Trigon has offices in San Jose, Dallas and New Jersey. For more information, visit Trigon on the web at www.trigongroup.com.

Highlander Engineering

Highlander Engineering, Inc., is the leading supplier of CORBA-compliant middleware for connecting intelligent devices and a leading supplier of engineering services to embedded software developers. An embedded CORBA pioneer, Highlander has been the first to offer embedded implementations of the CORBA 2.0, Minimum CORBA, and Real-Time CORBA specifications. Founded in 1994, Highlander is privately held and headquartered in Lakeland, Florida. For more information, visit Highlander on the web at www.highlander.com.

CORBA is a registered trademark and Interface Definition Language, IDL, Unified Modeling Language and UML are trademarks of the Object Management Group, Inc. OM2000 is a trademark of Trigon Technology Group, Inc.

VisiBroker is a trademark of Inprise Corporation. UAP 2000 is a trademark of ANDA Networks.

VxWorks and pSOS are registered trademarks of Wind River Systems, Inc. Other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.