VERIZON BUSINESS ADDS DASHBOARD TO CUSTOMER CENTER PORTAL.

Verizon Business has launched Dashboard, a powerful new interface for the Verizon Business Customer Center online trouble-ticket management system. Dashboard enables eligible Verizon Business voice, IP and data customers to more efficiently manage their network resources through a single, real-time view of network alarms, trouble ticket status, network availability and service locations.

The Verizon Business Customer Center Dashboard eliminates the need to use multiple tools to track network activity. Instead, the Dashboard provides a bird's-eye view of the network, problems and associated trouble tickets -- all within a single application. It will be offered free of charge to eligible Verizon Business customers in the United States, Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific and Latin America, starting next month.

"Dashboard is yet another example of how Verizon Business is getting closer to our customers by putting valuable tools in their hands that enhance our business relationship," said Nancy Gofus, vice president of product management, Verizon Business. "Through this dynamic window to their Verizon Business world, our customers have more power to make the products we offer work even harder to boost their business."

With the introduction of Dashboard, Verizon Business Online Trouble Management customers can benefit from network alarm and trouble-ticket correlation capabilities available through the award-winning, patent pending Verizon Business IMPACT network management platform. IMPACT provides Verizon Business customers with one of the most advanced, automated network fault management systems available.

"The new global Dashboard capabilities help reduce customer time spent correlating alarms, trouble tickets and associated circuit IDs, and enable faster assessment and coordination for event resolution," said Rona Shuchat, research director, Web hosting/telecom transformation strategies for IDC, a leading industry analysis firm. "This Dashboard release is a major step forward for Verizon Business in aggregating data from multiple back-end systems to provide customers around the globe with a consolidated network-management view for monitoring, problem identification and resolution."

Dashboard extends the workflow process to customers as well. Through a seamless single sign-on integration with Verizon Business Online Trouble Management application, customers can proactively manage incidents by updating ticket details and referring them back to the company for resolution.

The Verizon Business Dashboard also provides key performance indicators regarding the categorization and history of trouble tickets. Tickets -- such as deferred-time tickets requiring customer action -- are grouped for quick identification and tracking. Dashboard also provides a history of key performance indicators for trouble tickets that includes a rolling 13-month trend highlighting repeat and chronic issues.

Additionally, Dashboard keeps track of network availability by access type. Each time a user logs in, the user can immediately determine if the network is performing above the minimum acceptable quality level or if it is in a degraded or critical st ate. The overall network availability metrics can be viewed as a rolling "30 day" and "last 24 hours" window to pinpoint when incidents occur.

In the future, Verizon Business plans to enhance the Dashboard capabilities to include the introduction of network traffic utilization key performance indicators, configuration management tools to monitor order provisioning and inventory, as well as application management visibility into Web hosting and network security threats.

Verizon Business can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.verizonbusiness.com/.

For more information, call 303/390-6593.