WOODLAND HILLS, Calif. -- Vertel Corporation (OTCBB:VRTL), a leading provider of convergent network mediation and management solutions, announced today that M*Ware(TM) 6.2.1, the upcoming release of Vertel's platform, is ready to support the new network management standard G.7712, approved on March 12, 2003 by ITU SG15. Major equipment vendors such as Lucent, Tellabs, Nortel and Marconi collaborated to define the G.7712 standard, which will be used for network management, signaling and routing traffic in SONET/SDH, OTN and DWDM networks. For the industry, G.7712 is important, since it enables intelligent optical networks with combined IP-managed and OSI-managed equipment. The standard is also a key building block for (G) MPLS, a protocol that ensures optimal routing and best network resource usage in combined IP, optical and circuit switching networks. "Operators are considering migrating to IP-based management to reduce cost; however simply replacing existing networks with new equipment is often not feasible for them. Integrating new IP-based equipment into existing OSI managed networks using G.7712 offers the ideal migration scenario with guaranteed backward compatibility," said Dave Baumgarten, SVP Engineering and Operations at Vertel. The G.7712 standard is also critical for vendors of network edge devices. It allows for easy transport of network management traffic to these devices via the core optical switches without the need to create expensive and complicated overlay networks. "Vertel's embedded telecommunication stacks (ETS) are inside many different vendors' equipment. By offering G.7712 support now, our customers can be first to market with new solutions," added Mr. Baumgarten. Vertel Corp.