Nortel and IBM have announced a new service assurance solution combining IBM Tivoli Netcool Carrier VoIP Manager software with network consulting and integration services from Nortel. This solution is for communication service providers seeking greater network capacity and performance with lower costs.

Nortel's Service Assurance Solution unites IBM Tivoli Netcool Carrier VoIP Manager, Nortel's Tivoli Netcool-based Common Management Platform, and Nortel Global Services to provide greater visibility and control across multi-technology, multi-vendor, networks. This enables service providers to more quickly isolate and address performance issues, helping to lower support costs and improve service levels.

"As customers use more video and other bandwidth-intensive applications, they become less tolerant of service degradation," said Dietmar Wendt, president of Nortel Global Services. "Yet managing service quality is more challenging than ever as converged networks and technologies grow more complex. IBM and Nortel understand these challenges, and we have combined our strengths in IT applications, network technologies, and services to address them."

Nortel's Service Assurance Solution provides operational consulting, network integration, customization, and performance monitoring from the Nortel Global Services portfolio. This saves service providers the time and cost of hiring, training and using in-house IT staff for service assurance.

Key to providing these services is IBM's Tivoli Netcool Carrier VoIP Manager, the first integrated service quality, fault and performance management offering from IBM for carrier VoIP networks. It presents real-time service level management views, helping service providers identify network problems before they occur.

The initial version of IBM Tivoli Netcool Carrier VoIP Manager supports Nortel's Communication Server 2000 IP Multimedia Softswitch.

"Leveraging IBM's Tivoli Netcool technology in Nortel's Common Management Platform is an effective way to offer consistent, comprehensive network management," said Peter Mottishaw, an analyst with OSS Observer. "Combining Nortel's network engineering and operations expertise with IBM Tivoli Netcool's market-leading service assurance product suite offers service providers the ability to efficiently implement a world-class OSS (operations support system) solution while minimizing the risks that often accompany such projects."

"IBM Tivoli Netcool Carrier VoIP Manager supports IBM's commitment to the communication service provider market in enabling best-in-class service assurance for existing and emerging next generation services," said Kieran Moynihan, vice president and chief technology officer of Telecoms, Tivoli Software, IBM. "The software leverages IBM's industry leading service management platform for real-time management of carrier VoIP services and infrastructures."

About IBM Tivoli Netcool Software

IBM Tivoli Netcool software has been selected by more than 1,000 service providers globally, including all of the top 20 carriers. The software helps service providers ensure service quality; reduce operational costs and speed time to market. IBM software helps service providers address emerging opportunities in next-generation network transformation, fixed/mobile convergence, and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) deployment. For more information about IBM Tivoli Netcool software, visit http://www-306.ibm.com/software/tivoli/solutions/service-provider.

About Nortel

Nortel is a recognized leader in delivering communications capabilities that make the promise of Business Made Simple a reality for our customers. Our next-generation technologies, for both service provider and enterprise networks, support multimedia and business-critical applications. Nortel's technologies are designed to help eliminate today's barriers to efficiency, speed, and performance by simplifying networks and connecting people to the information they need, when they need it. Nortel does business in more than 150 countries around the world. For more information, visit Nortel on the Web at http://www.nortel.com/. For the latest Nortel news, visit www.nortel.com/news.