Agilent Launches AssureMEAgilent Launches AssureME

NICE, France -- Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE:A - News) today announced its new assureME portfolio of solutions that enables users to measure subscribers' experience, putting a customer-centric perspective on traditional network assurance. assureME solutions leverage Agilent's leadership in the operations support system market by adding customer- and service-specific measurements to its broad collection of network data measurement capabilities. Agilent's unique ability to collect and analyze information from this spectrum of sources enables the communication industry's next breakthrough application: end-to-end customer assurance management.

A service provider's assurance strategy relies on data feeds from multiple sources. Traditional network assurance, where network operations personnel use network-element data feeds to manage faults and performance, has been the primary focus for service providers. Although network assurance continues to be important, it cannot directly measure customers' service experience -- a requirement for today's complex service offerings, which rely on multiple technologies and partners, and come with increased user expectations. Agilent's assureME solutions address this market shift by managing the network, services, and the customer experience. assureME groups new products with Agilent's industry-leading management products to create solutions that address critical issues such as managing service quality for high-value roamers or business enterprises.

"We've found that the majority of customer-reported problems were handset configuration issues, rather than network faults, so customer experience can be poor even though the network is operating perfectly," said Tom Walls, vice president, Agilent's Assurance Solutions Division. "Only by correlating customer, service and network data can service providers get a true measurement of the problems their customers encounter. Our measured experience solutions aggregate and correlate rich sources of network and service data with a customer definition, so service providers can monitor how their most significant customers are doing."

In a separate release:

NICE, France -- Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE:A - News) today announced the first two solution suites in its new assureME portfolio of customer, service and network assurance products. assureME-Roamer and assureME-Corporate address the key challenge facing mobile operators: providing an optimum service experience for roaming subscribers and high-value customers.

Both solutions leverage Agilent's new mobile experience management software, which collects information from handset devices to measure actual customer experiences as they use mobile services. assureME solution suites combine Agilent's new and existing assurance products to help operators increase revenue by providing premium service quality for their highest-value customers. assureME-Corporate

assureME-Corporate provides focused measured-experience information about an operator's high-value customers, including business enterprises, to help operations centers understand the service quality experienced by these customers.

Agilent's innovative mobile experience management software transforms on-handset measurements into Key Experience Indicators (KEIs) to give operators an understanding of the real customer experience. assureME-Corporate helps operators construct realistic service-level agreements, characterize service behavior, pinpoint service and customer problems, and build profiles of corporate customers to enable premier service.

"Agilent's Mobile Experience Manager is a quantum leap in capability," said Jim Pacyga, director of Services and Program Management, T-Mobile. "No other solution provides this level of flexibility. With Agilent's solution we can control the tests to run, sampling conditions, handset participation, where and when we make measurements and exactly how they are reported."

assureME-Roamer

Roamers generate more profit than other types of users, and they tend to make heavy use of high-value services. assureME-Roamer uses new technology to increase roamer capture and retention. It monitors network topology to pinpoint where roamers are dropped from the network so operators know where to correct problems and deploy new infrastructure.

assureME-Roamer uses Agilent's patented experience-management technology to make QoS mobile-experience measurements. These capabilities bring new functionality to an already strong solution suite that manages inbound and outbound roamers to enable high quality of service and to help increase average revenue per subscriber.

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A)