COMMUNICATIONS NEWS

isMobile Expects 50% Savings with ILOG Products
E-scheduler manages mobile workforce

To further its mission to "mPower" the mobile workforce, isMobile has upgraded its top application with ILOG optimization and visualization software.

isMobile's Coordinator work scheduling application enables companies to manage the activities of its field personnel through mobile phones, computers and personal data assistants, or palmtops. Already the company projects savings as high as 50% in administrative costs for its customers, while doubling productivity, revenue and customer satisfaction.

"ILOG's software was integrated rapidly and seamlessly into our overall application," says Mats Pettersson, director of marketing and sales at isMobile. "Using prewritten software components from ILOG was the logical choice, in order to meet time-to-market, functionality and performance demands."

Coordinator uses a dispatching scheduler, built with industry-leading constraint-programming optimizers ILOG Solver and ILOG Scheduler, with a Web-accessible graphical front end created with ILOG JViews, ILOG's Java visualization component. Using a Web browser from virtually any location, a user can gain real-time access to the scheduler through the front end.

IsMobile's latest offering shortens lead time and reduces administrative costs for customers and users by creating better communication and a faster flow of information. Field personnel, such as maintenance workers, insurance salespeople and delivery truck drivers, can use mobile equipment to tap into Coordinator to enter information or check schedules, and personalized messaging inform customers of field personnel's schedules.

"Applying ILOG's technology to mobile workforce management is a good way to meet the demand for quick, timely delivery of wireless personalized products and services," says Eric Brisson, vice president and general manager of the ILOG Communications Business Division.

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NEC Adopts ILOG Telecom Graphics
Equipment provider switching to open standards

NEC Corp., one of Japan's leading providers of computer, communications and electronic equipment, is switching to telecommunications' open visualization standards for network management systems, and has selected ILOG JTGO and the ILOG JViews Component Suite to ensure its success.

Completely devoted to making graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for communications management, ILOG JTGO fully embraces the widely accepted guidelines set by such industry standards organizations as the TeleManagement Forum. NEC plans to use ILOG JTGO in upgrading OPENBASE, the company's network management platform.

In making its decision, NEC cited ILOG's commitment to open standards and its development of powerful object-oriented Java products based on advanced human-factor research. Such support will enable NEC customers to customize OPENBASE to meet their unique requirements. Moreover, third-party developers will be able to more easily integrate their products into the NEC platform.

"We also selected the ILOG GUI software components because they are the most complete graphics solution on the market for network management interfaces, and operators seem to prefer the rich graphics and an intuitive look and feel," says Yozo Imatake, general manager of the network management systems development division of NEC. "ILOG GUI software components, the de facto industry standard for network management, dramatically reduce development time, which will mean we can deploy our new NMS products more quickly."

Savings in time and cost
The explosive growth of e-business requires larger, more complex communication networks. This trend is causing a rapid increase in operating costs. The new OPENBASE will provide cost-effective, comprehensive operations management for networks ranging from local area networks for corporations to large-scale ones for mobile and Internet service providers.

Plugging off-the-shelf software components like ILOG JTGO and ILOG JViews into OPENBASE will allow NEC to more quickly tailor its network platform to individual business requirements at lower development costs.

ILOG's telecom graphics products are the result of extensive usability research into ergonomics and operator usage. ILOG-based interfaces typically require less training to use, and produce less fatigue than other GUIs. As a result, ILOG's telecom-specifc products -- ILOG JTGO and ILOG TGF -- are widely preferred for network and service management applications.

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