8th May 2002
Nexagent launches collaborative commerce platform for the telecoms industry

~ service providers will now be able to sell performance-guaranteed managed IP services across multiple telecom carriers, unlocking a $12 billion opportunity 1 and significantly improving their enterprise customers’ experience ~

Nexagent (formerly InterProvider), founded by Charlie Muirhead, who previously founded Orchestream (LSE:OCH), and Chris Gare, formally Director of Advanced Services at Cable & Wireless, has developed a network interconnect architecture and collaborative commerce platform for the telecommunications industry. Nexagent’s platform enables, for the first time, service providers and telecom carriers to work together to deliver cost-effective, performance-guaranteed, managed IP services internationally to all enterprise customers.

The unveiling of Nexagent’s collaboration platform and services follows 18 months of intense research and development carried out in stealth mode. Nexagent is now finalising agreements for commercial pilots with a limited number of telecoms carriers and plans to launch its commercial service in the second half of this year.

Summary
Today, enterprises of all sizes depend on Information Technology for many business critical processes and must create an IT infrastructure to deliver a wide range of applications (e.g. CRM, ERP, email, etc.) across multiple geographic sites, either internally or externally, with their trading partners, suppliers and customers. In order to deliver these applications in a constantly changing business environment, all enterprises are looking for cost effective, international Wide Area Network (WAN) connectivity between their geographic sites which is flexible, reliable and offers end-to-end visibility of service performance.

For voice services, it is possible today to make a call to anywhere in the world reliably and cost effectively, regardless of which carriers the callers are connected to. This is only made possible through a standardised, open partnership model where all carriers leverage their respective networks by sharing the delivery of each call, each getting paid for the usage of their network along the way. The regulation of the voice market forced the industry to adopt this model and it has taken over 20 years of research and development to deliver the seamless experience all customers expect today.

The data communications industry, on the other hand, has not been regulated, so carriers have not been forced to partner. Instead, on the back of forecasts of massive demand and cheap financing, nearly all elected to extend their own international capability through a combination of network build out, mergers and acquisitions and strategic alliances. Despite an estimated $600 billion of global investment, these solutions have not delivered a cost effective international service with reliability, flexibility and end-to-end service performance visibility for all enterprise customers to all locations. Enterprises who have turned to the Internet for an answer have found that, while the Internet offers flexible and international reach, it is not considered reliable for many business-critical commercially sensitive applications.

Recent research by Analysys (April 2002) shows an estimated $7 billion untapped global opportunity in 2003, rising to $12 billion in 2006, from delivering WAN services with performances guarantees. This number excludes revenues from advanced services such as VoIP.

Nexagent, identifying this untapped opportunity, has developed a network interconnect architecture and collaborative commerce platform which will make an open partnership-based solution (comparable to the model in the voice industry) available to the data communications industry. Nexagent’s platform enables, for the first time, service providers and telecom carriers to work together to deliver cost-effective, performance-guaranteed, managed IP services internationally to all enterprise customers.

The Problem
Today, enterprises of all sizes depend on Information Technology for many business critical processes and must create an IT infrastructure to deliver a wide range of applications (e.g. CRM, ERP, email, etc.) across multiple geographic sites, either internally or externally, with their trading partners, suppliers and customers. In order to deliver these applications in a constantly changing business environment, all enterprises are looking for cost effective, international Wide Area Network (WAN) connectivity between their geographic sites which is flexible, reliable and offers end-to-end visibility of service performance.

The most viable solution today is the time consuming, complex and costly custom integration of multiple, sometimes hundreds, of WAN services (e.g. Frame Relay, ATM, MPLS, IPSec) purchased from multiple carriers to try to attain the geographic reach and reliability enterprises need. Many large enterprises are forced to integrate solutions in-house, but many smaller enterprises cannot afford to do this and settle for partial connectivity to a small number of critical sites. In any case, this solution is expensive, inflexible and offers very poor visibility when problems occur making it difficult for timely
fixes.

A great many enterprises would like to migrate to a simpler managed IP service, which should reduce complexity and cost, and increase flexibility. The problem is, carriers can only offer a managed IP service with performance guarantees on their own network. Global carriers focus on the larger enterprises, offering them international services to as many of the sites as they can, but often these are expensive and still only partial solutions. For medium and smaller enterprises there is simply no cost-effective international solution.

Turning to the Internet does not help: it delivers the international reach, but fails to deliver the performance guarantees most business critical applications require. The combination of these issues has significantly hindered the uptake of a managed IP solution to solve the international Wide Area Network (WAN) problem.

The Solution
Nexagent has developed a network interconnect architecture, collaboration platform and suite of unique demand and supply chain management services, including procurement, fulfilment and assurance. These enable service providers and telecom carriers to work together to deliver cost effective, performance guaranteed, managed IP services internationally across multiple telecommunication carriers.

Nexagent is not a telecom carrier, but rather operates as a neutral management agency between service providers and telecommunications carriers enabling:

•Service providers to satisfy all their enterprise customers’ location and performance requirements with a performance guaranteed, managed IP service that is cost effective, secure, flexible and predictable without owning all their own international facilities. Nexagent dramatically simplifies multi-carrier solution design and delivery, hence significantly increasing choice and reducing sales cycles.

•Carriers to leverage their existing network assets, and market new wholesale managed IP services to other service providers, generating net new revenues with minimal capex and low operational and sales costs.

Through better collaboration, Nexagent enables service providers to increase revenues, reduce costs and hence improve margins and ultimately to deliver an improved enterprise customer experience.

Recent research by Analysys shows that effective partnering will drastically reduce the need for enterprises to carry out integration in-house, equating to a cost saving of between $3-4 billion a year globally by 2006 2 . The report also estimates there will be $9 billion of untapped global revenue opportunity per annum in 2006, making it a total opportunity of $12 billion globally by 2006.

Steve Priestley, vice-president, Cisco Systems Network Service Providers EMEA, said, “Up until now, managed IP services have usually been confined within a single carrier’s network footprint. This presents a major challenge to enterprises that want to consistently and cost-effectively deploy mission critical applications and business services which go well beyond the footprint of a single carrier.”

“Where applications require such a solution, there is a need to create a supply chain that serves to remove the end to end delivery obstacle. A solution such as Nexagent’s will allow service providers to participate in an end-to-end delivery mechanism with consistent IP Service Level Agreements that will satisfy enterprise networking requirements, without geographical constraints. This will enable carriers to extend their network coverage in a simple, cost-effective manner, opening new market opportunities and bringing huge benefit to enterprise customers,” added Priestley.

Nexagent founder and CEO Charlie Muirhead said, “The lack of seamless connectivity between telecoms carriers has been recognised both within the industry and by enterprises for a number of years. However, only recent technology developments have made a solution to this problem possible. Nexagent has brought together a world-class team to deliver the first collaborative commerce platform to enable the procurement, fulfilment and assurance of performance guaranteed managed IP services across multiple telecom carriers’ network facilities.”

“This will provide a massive boost for the telecoms industry which has been struggling to find new ways to generate revenues and to expand service reach without further capital investment in new facilities. It should also prove excellent news for enterprises wishing to roll out advanced network strategies and who haven’t been able to so far, because of the lack of a service provider which can offer them the connectivity, reach, visibility and end-to-end performance guarantees they need at a price they can afford.” added Muirhead.

Nexagent’s solution is delivered using a combination of:

•Nexagent Peering Point (NPP): A technology agnostic peering architecture which is network transport layer independent and supports the interconnect of MPLS, Frame Relay, ATM and IPSec. The NPP enables service providers to select and control, on a per customer service basis, which carriers will be interconnected

•Service Control Device (SCD): Part of the NPP, the SCD, offers real-time, independent end-to-end service monitoring and control (through QoS mediation) on a per customer, per site, per Class of Service basis

•Collaborative Service Modelling and Workflow Engine: Leveraging a unified product catalogue and data model, service providers can perform rapid tactical designs for network solutions and are able to visualise and evaluate alternative solution designs

•Business Process Automation: A comprehensive, standardised and optimal method of procuring, fulfilling and assuring network services across multiple carriers•24X7X365 Service Operation Centre:

- World class commercial and network
- Operations team monitor and manage all aspects of the multi-carrier solution



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NOTES TO EDITORS
Nexagent is a global leader in collaborative commerce for the telecommunications industry. Headquartered in Reading, UK, it was founded in July 2000 by Charlie Muirhead, who previously founded Orchestream, the telecoms software company, and iGabriel.net, the angel investment network; and Chris Gare, formally Director of Advanced Services at Cable & Wireless.

Nexagent has developed a network interconnect architecture and collaborative commerce platform enabling service providers, for the first time, to work together to deliver cost-effective, performance guaranteed, managed IP services internationally across multiple telecom carriers. Nexagent is now finalising agreements for commercial pilots with a limited number of telecoms carriers and plans to launch commercial services in the second half of this year. For more information on Nexagent, visit its

Web site at www.nexagent.com

For further press information about Nexagent, including photography, please contact

George Coleman at Mantra PR:

Tel: +44 (0)20 7072 2300 Fax: +44 (0)20 7072 2301

Email: gcoleman@mantra-pr.com
Web: www.mantra-pr.com


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1. According to research by Analysys, April 2002, potential new revenue opportunities from delivering
multi-carrier/multi-technology, SLA-based WAN services will reach $12 billion by 2006

2.According to research by Analysys, April 2002. This figure relates to potential savings for multinational,
global 3,500 companies only.