OPNET Technologies and GN Nettest to Offer Integrated Planning and Test Solutions for MPLS and PNNI
BETHESDA, MD and TORONTO, CANADA -- March 14, 2001 -- OPNET Technologies, Inc., the leading provider of intelligent network management software, and GN Nettest, a leading worldwide designer and manufacturer of advanced equipment and systems for testing, monitoring and management of broadband networks, today unveiled plans to deliver integrated software solutions for planning and testing advanced networking technologies, beginning with Private Network-to-Network Interface (PNNI) and Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS).
The alliance brings together two leaders in their respective fields. OPNET’s award-winning software products are distinguished by a powerful, highly realistic virtual environment for analyzing a limitless range of "what if" scenarios such as traffic growth, deployment of new technologies, and alternative network designs. By taking advantage of OPNET's virtual environment to understand the impact of change on performance, service providers, enterprises, and equipment manufacturers make better decisions in network provisioning, configuration, planning, design, and management that result in lower costs and higher network performance.
GN Nettest provides vendors, carriers, enterprises and communication research laboratories with network testing solutions to validate the performance of network devices before they are deployed. GN Nettest’s interEMULATOR products allow clients to emulate realistic load, messaging, and faults for specific network technologies, including PNNI and MPLS. With realistic testing prior to deployment, vendors and network operators can drastically reduce the risk of failures and poor performance when introducing new technologies.
The two companies are collaborating to develop "bridge" software that allows their respective products to share information, providing a convenient, integrated workflow. OPNET’s virtual environment and predictive engine will provide realistic scenarios to drive the behavior of GN Nettest’s interEMULATOR software. The combined offering will provide customers with a complete solution -- the ability to accurately evaluate network and device performance prior to deployment and manage ongoing network operations with confidence.
"Best practice organizations integrate applications into the infrastructure through an integrated methodology that links application performance to the supporting infrastructure," reports Jerald Murphy, Vice President of META Group’s Global Networking Strategies Service. "Plan, design, build, and test should occur in an environment where the tools that support both design and test work closely together with consistent data. This integration is becoming increasingly important as both applications and networks become more complex and the time to deploy infrastructure right the first time rapidly decreases."
GN Nettest has already begun development for the bridge between OPNET’s recently announced PNNI and MPLS software, and GN Nettest’s interEMULATOR products. General availability of the bridge software is anticipated by June of this year.
"Traffic engineers, network planners and equipment developers will benefit from GN Nettest's interEMULATOR load testing by making use of OPNET software to generate realistic emulation scenarios," said Alain Cohen, President and CTO at OPNET. "We are pleased to be working with GN Nettest because we both share a vision — that efficiently operating next-generation networks requires a structured management effort that comprises planning, design, testing, monitoring, and change validation."
GN Nettest General Manager Stephane Attal added, "Network test teams conducting load and failure studies using interEMULATOR will benefit from OPNET’s advanced interface and predictive analysis engine. The result will be increased flexibility and accuracy for defining test conditions and more powerful abilities to analyze results. OPNET is a recognized leader in intelligent network management, an area we view as highly complementary to ours."
About OPNET Technologies, Inc.
Founded in 1986, OPNET Technologies, Inc. is the leading provider of intelligent network management software. The OPNET product suite combines predictive modeling and a comprehensive understanding of networking technologies to enable its customers to more effectively design and deploy networks, provision services, diagnose network and application performance problems, and predict the impact of proposed network modifications. For more information about OPNET and its products, visit www.opnet.com.
About GN Nettest
GN Nettest is a leading worldwide designer, manufacturer and marketer of advanced equipment and systems for testing, monitoring and management of all optical broadband communication networks. GN Nettest provides network operators, network equipment manufacturers, component manufacturers and enterprise service providers with the network testing solutions they need to troubleshoot and optimize performance in today's most complex and hybrid networks, as well as those planned for tomorrow. GN Nettest is represented through business centers in Denmark, USA, Canada and France and through sales subsidiaries and distributors all over the world. GN Nettest's products are sold in over 70 countries. GN Nettest has a staff worldwide of approximately 1500. GN Nettest is a wholly owned subsidiary of GN Great Nordic, a multi-billion dollar Danish communications company and one of Scandinavia's leading industrial companies. GN Nettest is an ISO 9001 certified quality system. For more information on GN Nettest or any of its products and services, please visit www.gnnettest.com.
The statements contained in this press release that are not purely historical are forward-looking statements within the meaning the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as amended, including statements regarding OPNET Technologies Inc.'s expectations, beliefs, intentions, or strategies regarding the future. All forward-looking statements included in this document are based upon information available to OPNET Technologies, Inc. as of the date hereof; OPNET Technologies, Inc. assumes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. For a discussion of such risks and uncertainties, see the Company's reports filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission; including its 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2000.
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Note to editors: The word OPNET is spelled with all upper-case letters.
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