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Asidua joins TeleManagement World Catalyst Showcase

9th April 2004

Belfast, Northern Ireland [April 9, 2004]: Asidua has joined the COBWEBS Catalyst Showcase that will be demonstrated at TeleManagement World in Nice, May 18-20, 2004. TeleManagement World is organised by the TeleManagement Forum (TM Forum), a non-profit global organisation that provides leadership, strategic guidance and practical solutions to improve the management and operation of information and communications services.

The Catalyst Showcase program is the living lab of the TM Forum that enables service providers, system integrators, and hardware/software vendors to work together to solve common, critical industry challenges. Catalyst projects utilise real and prototype products to automate key processes and deliver integrated business solutions. The uniqueness of the TM Forum's Catalyst projects is that they are all sponsored by service providers who define the OSS/BSS (Operations Support Systems/Business Support Systems ) problems and customer requirements. They are also NGOSS (Next Generation OSS) compliant, use existing COTS products and develop interoperable software/hardware products for their solutions.

The goal of the COBWEBS project is to investigate the applicability of Web Services as an OSS infrastructure. Current service-provider operational environments are typically fragmented, with islands-of-integration based around departmental, functional, business unit, or political boundaries. These islands-of-integration are implemented using a variety of established tools and connected using a range of tactical interfaces. Automating and managing end-to-end processes across this fragmentation and gaining visibility and metrics for end-to-end business processes is a complex and expensive task. The effect on the service-provider's business as a result of these islands-of-integration is dramatic: it leads to an operational environment that is resistant to change.

Web-services standards promise a mechanism for breaking down technology barriers and providing a common management-platform across operational boundaries. Web Services provide a set of technology-neutral standards for integrating, orchestrating, and managing operational domains. In addition, leveraging existing industry agreements such as eTOM, SID, TNA (Technology Neutral Architecture) of NGOSS and Web-services in the context of the OSS/J initiative, will improve operational efficiency through increased levels of interoperability, automation, and streamlining.

Asidua is a corporate member of TM Forum. TM Forum is the world’s leading trade association that provides leadership & guidance, technical & business innovation, and education & training to improve the way telecoms, media and information services are created, delivered, assured and charged. TM Forum also facilitates marketing and networking activities for its members.

About COBWEBS
COBWEBS (Crossing Operational Boundaries with WEB Services) is sponsored by BT and Colt and along with Asidua the other participating companies are 4DH Consulting, Granite, MBT, Microsoft, Nortel Networks, ORMvision, Sonic Software and Sun Microsystems. Asidua's role is to demonstrate how to use Sonic Software to provide business metrics for the end-to-end business processes. For more information about COBWEBS click here.

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