ROCKVILLE, Md. -- Visual Networks, Inc. (Nasdaq: VNWK), a leading provider of network and application performance management solutions, today announced that it has extended its research and development relationship with Mahindra-British Telecom (MBT). This strategic alliance complements Visual Networks' corporate development staff and accelerates the time to market for the company's network and application performance management technologies. Headquartered in Mumbai, India, MBT is a joint venture between Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd. India, and British Telecommunications Plc. Its over 7,500 employees worldwide provide IT services exclusively to the telecommunications industry.

"We have worked with MBT for nearly a year on a number of development projects and have been extremely pleased with the results," said Wayne Fuller, Executive Vice President of Product Operations at Visual Networks. "MBT supplements our Rockville, Maryland-based corporate development staff to speed the delivery of new technologies to our customer base of over 2,500 organizations worldwide. Our relationship with MBT is growing, and, due to the time differences, we are benefiting significantly from the ability to have product development efforts conducted on an around-the-clock basis. We see the MBT relationship as an important part of our future development efforts and our focus on maximizing our engineering productivity in a highly cost- effective manner."

"Visual Networks is a very strategic customer for MBT and the relationship has helped MBT to enhance its value proposition to software product companies," said CP Gurnani, President International Operations at MBT. "MBT's offshore delivery model, robust development processes and SEI CMM Level 5 quality standards provide a very efficient, high quality and faster development cycles resulting in reduced time to market for Visual Networks' products. We see a lot of synergies between our organizations and look forward to strengthening the relationship with Visual Networks over the coming years."

Visual Networks Inc.

Mahindra British Telecom Ltd.