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Hammerhead Systems Announces First Product with Bandwidth Pooling, Dual Control Planes and Key Network Management System Innovations HSX 6000 Migration Edge Switch Available Today for $20+ Billion Telecom Market Mountain View , CA – May 17, 2004 – Hammerhead Systems, Inc., the market leader in revenue migration solutions, today announced the HSX 6000 and Pegador Network Management System, the first migration edge solution purpose-built for revenue migration. The HSX 6000 switch and Pegador NMS are optimized to enable a service provider to migrate existing data services revenue in an operationally controlled manner from legacy ATM networks to an MPLS-based common backbone, while enabling Ethernet services with a profitable business model. Hammerhead brings long-awaited innovation and disruptive economics to the Layer 2 carrier infrastructure, providing a 10-30X improvement in density and a 50%+ improvement in cost versus existing platforms. “Hammerhead has a totally unique approach to the most significant problem service providers face today, the evolution of customers from legacy services toward higher-margin and higher-layer services. Their strategy focuses on harmonizing the drivers that change a customer’s appetite for services with the forces that are acting on carriers to modernize their infrastructure. This is something that can be done only at the service edge, and only with a device that is completely adaptable in its mapping of customer interfaces to interior network services. This is the first architecture for edge evolution I’ve seen that is completely flexible and credible,” said Tom Nolle, President of CIMI Corporation. "Hammerhead Systems provides an innovative solution for service providers migrating Layer 2 services to a next-generation IP/MPLS network," said Mark Bieberich, program manager, The Yankee Group. "Hammerhead's key technological advancements, including bandwidth pooling and bridge-and-roll, are clear differentiators that translate into significant economic value for service providers." “The HSX 6000 is the first switch with an optimally efficient system architecture. This modular architecture ensures that a service provider’s return on investment occurs in as little as 1/3 of the time traditionally expected for Layer 2 services,” said Joe Sigrist, President and CEO of Hammerhead Systems. “We are pleased to announce that both the HSX 6000 and Pegador NMS are Generally Available today.” HSX 6000 The compact HSX 6000 offers breakthrough port density for Layer 2 service aggregation, with industry-leading densities for both fine-grained and coarse-grained service granularity. The HSX 6000 features Service Agile Ports, which enable flexible software provisioning of any physical port for any service or speed, eliminating costly truck rolls by future-proofing carrier deployments from changes in service mix. The HSX 6000 leverages a Distributed Service Interworking Engine, critical to enabling service providers to introduce new Ethernet-based services to their existing Frame Relay and ATM customer base without cannibalizing revenue streams. This interworking capability is unique because it is bi-directional, control plane agnostic, and highly scalable, such that it can handle thousands of fine-grained flows. Industry Firsts Bandwidth Pooling – Maximizes asset efficiency and flexibility, and minimizes capital costs by leveraging a resource pooling architecture that virtualizes key system resources. Hammerhead’s bandwidth pooling innovation means that carriers no longer have to strand system capacity with expensive, under-utilized forwarding cards because of physical interface real estate constraints. With bandwidth pooling, the HSX 6000 enables carriers to add switch resources and capacity in a linear fashion, dramatically reducing capital costs for carrier deployments. Dual Control Planes with Bridge and Roll – Unlike competitive switches and routers with only a single control plane (either ATM or IP/MPLS), Hammerhead’s unique software architecture was designed from the ground up with a dual control plane -- both ATM and MPLS – simultaneously enabling interoperability with the large legacy ATM installed base and native connectivity to recently built MPLS cores. For carriers to operationally execute a non-disruptive migration of mission critical data traffic while retaining customers and revenues, Bridge and Roll is a “must-have” capability to enable a graceful cutover of circuits from legacy ATM cores to MPLS backbones. Pegador NMS The Pegador Provisioning Gateway overcomes a significant entry barrier of OSS integration by enabling seamless northbound insertion into carrier OSS’s while providing provisioning interoperability with the installed base of element management systems. With the Provisioning Gateway, a carrier can deploy the HSX 6000 on one end of an ATM/Frame Relay connection and still maintain end-to-end provisioning throughout its existing network. Key features include Service-Aware Capability – Provides users with the ability to designate priorities, view network usage and set filters on mission critical traffic. Data Integrity – Ensures current information through checks and balances between the HSX 6000 switch and EMS databases. Standard Interfaces – Provides s eamless interoperability into the OSS infrastructure, with standard interfaces including SNMP, CORBA, TL-1 and XML. OAM&P Support – Offers comprehensive support of performance monitoring, defect and failure detection, systems protection, and fault localization. Reliability – Provides nodal and EMS databases ensuring no single point of failure and redundancy. Pricing and Availability About Hammerhead Systems |
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