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M2 PRESSWIRE-14 November 2000-PROTEK: Protek launches advanced Service Provisioning software; Protek launches Flagship Convergent Service provisioning as latest addition to Flagship OSS suite; Broad spectrum provisioning with an easy to use graphically enhanced user interface, backed by a flexible and adaptable inventory allows the rapid provisioning of multi-technology services (C)1994-2000 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD Maidenhead -- Protek, the global supplier of business and operational support systems software, has launched its Flagship Convergent Service Provisioning offering. Flagship SP offers extensive interactive and intelligent provisioning support for a wide range of networking technologies including IP, SDH, ATM, Frame Relay and both wireline and wireless access technologies. By flexibly modeling both the underlying bandwidth models and equipment that underpins service delivery, services can be accurately provisioned more rapidly than ever before. Protek's Flagship SP software has an extensive drag & drop graphical user interface that includes map and equipment schematics. These show active views from continents down to card level and allow users to gain a complete view of their network, including all locations and equipment. Also available are schematic views of location, rack and circuit, which are intelligent and fully integrated into both the drag & drop environment and the extensive tabular view of the network and resources. Flagship SP offers users a complete and meaningful view of their entire network and services structure. New equipment types and variants can be readily added into the system through the advanced equipment editor facilities. New bandwidth and allocation quotas can be added for any new service in a similar fashion making Flagship SP capable of rapidly matching new service needs and provisioning them with maximum efficiency and minimum delay. A Service Provisioning system has to be capable of taking customer orders all the way through to the individual work packages that make up the service for a particular customer. Flagship SP excels in this respect with the capability to configure networking equipment through Protek's Active Inventory product, as well as create works orders for the inevitable manual components of Service delivery. This is coupled with extensive lifecycle management features that not only allow for the rapid and accurate planning of new services, but also the timely delivery of them. Flagship SP is underpinned by a well-structured, adaptable high performance inventory system which can be interrogated by reporting tools such as Business Objects and Cognos to offer meaningful, focussed analysis of the network services and customers. A further significant benefit to the customer is that Protek is a leading OSS vendor, providing a pre-integrated suite of OSS including Network Management, Customer Care & Billing (CCB) in addition to Service Provisioning. With Flagship SP's Active Inventory module, the Inventory is automatically linked to and up loaded with real network components. This means that all existing and any new elements of a network are instantly identified and available for immediate use in provisioning. Also significant network alarms are immediately registered, so as to allow both effective Customer Care and accurate Provisioning to take place. The Flagship SP product is a multi-user system and can be deployed in the largest of networks. With its highly advanced graphical user interface, backed by extensive tabular views of data, users can quickly and accurately provision advanced services. Geoff Butcher, Protek's CEO, said, "Protek continues to evolve and develop new OSS solutions, to ensure that our customers can launch and provision new services, rapidly and efficiently. This new SP product is part of Protek's unique integrated Flagship suite of products, which gives our customers the flexibility and ease of use to significantly enhance business efficiency and increase revenue". The Flagship SP technology also has a unique data validation feature, which is able to 'cleanse' data as it enters the application according to the user's own business and equipment rules. Data is added to a pre- built model, which means the service provider can audit data at the commissioning phase and though-out the product lifecycle, which avoids the 'rubbish in - rubbish out' feature, common in many software solutions. The technology is highly scalable and can deal with multi-million circuit databases that are being accessed by many