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News Releases
New Edge Networks Builds Web-Enabled Customer Self Service OSS for DSL in Record Time
VANCOUVER, Wash. - (Jan. 5, 2000) - New Edge Networks, the leading national wholesale DSL provider in underserved small, medium and rural areas, today announced it set a new benchmark for building a "customer self service" operating support system (OSS) that is flowing and provisioning orders for wholesale digital subscriber line service.
New Edge Networks successfully built its state of the art OSS within 60 days--believed to be a record deployment--as compared to more than a year generally required for conventional methods and systems. New Edge Networks is committed to building a no touch industry-leading order flow-through and end-to-end provisioning model that will provide complete customer self service through Web interfaces for new and existing customers.
The New Edge Networks operating support system, named PILOT, enables customers to enter order information once via a Web-enabled interface, triggering flow-through provisioning and network management. PILOT, which stands for Primary Integrated Logical Office Tool, takes multiple heterogeneous systems used for billing, order management, provisioning and network management, ties them together through an application integrator and sends all the data to one data warehouse.
"Our philosophy is to push as much functionality as possible to the customer," said Dan Moffat, president, chief executive officer and co-founder of New Edge Networks. "We built and implemented the latest generation service activation machine faster than anyone thought possible. We understand that coverage, speed to market and driving users to our network is key for our ultimate success."
By entering customer information in one place and flowing the data from system to system, PILOT eliminates multiple points of potential errors. Since all data is serviced via one data warehouse, New Edge Networks also eliminates multiple databases with disparate information. New Edge Network began offering wholesale DSL service Nov. 17, less than six months after receiving venture capital funding.
"Instantaneous scalability is the business order of the new decade," said Natalie Diggins, vice president of operations and co-founder of New Edge Networks. "PILOT is component based and allows us to plug and play new applications, scale to meet our rapidly changing customer demands and leverage our vendor relationships."
In addition to the basic applications necessary for establishing DSL service today, PILOT also will soon include new components for customer relationship management, enabling sales automation, trouble ticketing and customer care. Other future upgrades will enable New Edge Networks to connect its operating support system to its customers' OSS systems, extending flow-through provisioning even further to end users, for example.
"New Edge Networks achieved Web self service with an exceptionally high level of automation and customer reliability faster than anyone else we know of in this industry," said Grover Righter, vice president of marketing for ObjectSwitch. "Being able to 'go live' in less than 2 months of elapsed time is a record for such a project."
New Edge Networks selected ObjectSwitch, a privately held venture capital backed software company based in San Francisco, Calif. to integrate all of the component elements of PILOT. These include SupplierExpress(tm) from NightFire Software Inc.; Infranet from Portal Software Inc. (NASDAQ:PRSF); and MainSteetXpress(tm) 46020 Network Manager from Newbridge Networks (NYSE:NN; TSE:NNC).
With NightFire SupplierExpress(tm) software, New Edge Networks automates communication with its wholesale partners, thereby reducing substantially service delivery time and operating costs. NightFire provides New Edge Networks one consistent interface to connect the company's order management systems with various regional and local telephone companies.
Portal's Infranet customer management and billing software provides real-time instant account creation and tracking of wholesale customers.
The Newbridge Network Manager offers a wide range of capabilities, including point and click service provisioning and trouble shooting.
"ObjectSwitch is the glue that holds and ties together all our network and management elements," Diggins said. "Together, we have built a one-of-a-kind, new millennium-era OSS that enables electronic commerce and real time service."
About New Edge Networks
Based in Vancouver, Wash., New Edge Networks is the leading national wholesale DSL provider in underserved small, medium and rural markets. Last June, New Edge Networks completed its first round of equity funding from three top-tier venture capital firms including Accel Partners, Palo Alto, Calif., Greylock, Boston, Mass., and Crosspoint Venture Partners, Woodside, Calif. The company's Web site address is www.newedgenetworks.com.
Contact:
Sal Cinquegrani
(360) 906-9723
ATTN: New Edge Networks news releases contain information that is accurate as of the date they are issued. Information contained in past news releases may become out of date and the company does not assume responsibility for updating information contained in past news releases.