Acme Packet showcases innovative products and solutions at Interconnect 2010

Series of live demonstrations at user conference showcases new platforms and expanding portfolio of enterprise, contact center, mobile/FMC and fixed-line solutions

BURLINGTON, MA - Acme Packet® (NASDAQ: APKT), the leader in session border control solutions, today announced the series of live demonstrations to be presented at Interconnect 2010, the company’s sixth annual worldwide user conference being held May 16-19 in San Diego, California.

The thirteen interconnected demonstrations will showcase Acme Packet’s wide-ranging capabilities for delivering enterprise, contact center, mobile/FMC and fixed-line services and applications. They collectively feature all of Acme Packet’s products within its session border control solution portfolio—session border controller (SBC), session-aware load balancer (SLB), session routing proxy (SRP) and multiservice security gateway (MSG)—and integrate selected products and services from Acme Packet partners. These partners include AirWalk Communications, Avaya, BroadSoft, Camiant, Colibria, EXFO, Movial, NetNumber, NeuStar, Psytechnics, Tandberg, now a part of Cisco Systems, Inc., Tango Networks, Tatara Systems and Vidtel.

“The demonstrations at this year’s Interconnect conference continue to exhibit our leadership in delivering comprehensive and innovative, yet pragmatic, SBC solutions for service providers and enterprises,” said Seamus Hourihan, Acme Packet’s vice president of marketing and product management. “Once again, we would like to thank all of our solution partners that are instrumental in contributing to the success of this event"

Demonstrations being presented at Interconnect 2010 include the following:

Enterprise and contact center solutions demonstrations

Enterprise SIP trunking and secure teleworker
Acme Packet will demonstrate the Net-Net® SBC deployed as part of a SIP trunking and secure teleworker application. The Acme Packet Net-Net SBC will be placed between the Avaya Aura™ Communication Manager and a service provider SIP trunk. In this role, the SBC will provide the security and interoperability necessary for successful implementation of enterprise SIP trunking. This demonstration will also include SIP-based teleworker endpoints connecting to the enterprise VoIP network over untrusted networks using TLS and SRTP encryption. The demonstration will also involve an intentional attack on the enterprise telephony infrastructure using test equipment to demonstrate Acme Packet’s Net-SAFE® security framework for protecting the SIP trunks and teleworker applications against attack.

Managed enterprise SBC services
Acme Packet will demonstrate the fault, configuration, accounting, performance and security (FCAPS) management capabilities of Net-Net OS delivered in the context of a managed enterprise SBC service. Acme Packet’s managed enterprise SBC solution extends the SIP trunking service demarcation point all the way to the enterprise premise as part of a SIP trunking service.

Net-Net OS-E software for OEM applications
Acme Packet has recently made its Net-Net OS-E software available to OEM partners to embed Acme Packet’s SBC technology into other network elements, combining the best of Acme Packet’s technology with hardware components provided by the OEM vendor. Acme Packet will demonstrate the Net-Net OS-E OEM software on select third-party hardware.

Interactive SIP trunking return-on-investment (ROI) kiosk
Acme Packet will demonstrate a ROI tool that illustrates the cost-savings potential of moving to SIP trunking. With this tool, enterprises can understand specifically how SIP trunking reduces access, local and long distance charges and consolidates over-provisioned trunks into a more cost-effective “resource pool” for voice and data services.

Fixed-line solutions demonstrations

Hosted video conferencing services
In this demonstration, Acme Packet’s Net-Net SBC will secure and enable the delivery of first-class hosted intra- or inter-enterprise video conferencing services. During this demonstration, a three-way, continuous-presence, HD video conference between Tandberg’s E20 and MXP 1700 endpoints will utilize Vidtel Connect from Vidtel, a hosted video conferencing service provider. The Net-Net SBC will perform bandwidth-based admission control and transport controls to ensure a high quality-of-experience (QoE) for audio and video by normalizing and controlling SIP signaling, and securing the service provider’s conferencing and service delivery infrastructure against malicious attacks and non-malicious overloads.

Policy-enabled admission control for bundled services
Acme Packet’s Net-Net SBC functions as a Real-Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) proxy and SIP back-to-back user agent, controlling the delivery of RTSP-based streaming video and SIP-based VoIP-over-broadband access networks. During this demonstration, the SBC will query Camiant’s Multimedia Policy Engine, a 3GPP-compliant Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF), to admit or reject multimedia sessions based on bandwidth policies established by the service provider. The Net-Net SBC will also apply transport controls to assure quality of service (QoS) and compliance with SLAs for all session types, and assign appropriate QoS marking for each session.

Mobile and fixed mobile convergence (FMC) solutions demonstrations

SIP Multimedia-xpress for voice and RCS services
Acme Packet’s new Net-Net SIP Multimedia-xpress (SMX), which reduces the complexity and cost of delivering high-value, revenue-generating SIP multimedia services, will provide the central service delivery element for VoIP and Rich Communication Suite (RCS) services to fixed and mobile endpoints. In addition to the full suite of access SBC and P-CSCF features, Net-Net SMX includes a SIP registrar and subscriber database look-up, which delivers equivalent I-CSCF and S-CSCF functions, in a single, cost-effective system. During this demonstration, Acme Packet’s Net-Net SMX will work in conjunction with BroadSoft BroadWorks voice application server and Colibria’s IM and presence RCS application servers, and will deliver communication and collaboration services to Movial Communicator PC and mobile clients. For a subscriber database, this demonstration makes use of NeuStar’s Multi-media interconnect (MMIS) and GSMA Pathfinder services which provide highly resilient and scalable tier 0 to tier 2 hosted carrier ENUM solutions to service providers. MMIS is supported by rich policy-based NAPTR records that enable federated bespoke service discovery and global reach.

Enterprise femtocell and FMC
During this demonstration, Acme Packet’s Net-Net Security Gateway (SG) and Net-Net Session Director (SD) will work together with partners AirWalk Communications, Tatara Systems and Tango Networks, to deliver SIP-based voice services to an enterprise environment using a femtocell for improved coverage and innovative FMC Unified Communications (UC) services that extend enterprise UC to mobile phones. AirWalk Communications’ EdgePoint™ CDMA femtocells convert legacy signaling and media to SIP and RTP for transport over broadband Internet access connections. Tango Networks’ Abrazo integrates mobile phones into the enterprise, enabling any mobile phone to become an extension of the IP PBX or UC system. Acme Packet’s Net-Net SG provides the femtocell security gateway function for securely tunneling voice and data traffic across the Internet using IPsec. The Net-Net SBC provides SIP session control, including denial-of-service protection, admission control and protocol normalization. Acme Packet’s SBC also routes sessions to Tatara Systems’ Tatara Convergence Server (TCS) which provides voice, messaging, regulatory and supplementary services to femtocell-connected mobile phones as well as active session handover to the macro TDM-based cellular network.

Core session routing and interconnect solutions demonstrations

Complete core session routing and interconnect
During this demonstration, Acme Packet’s Net-Net product family will show a complete core session routing and VoIP interconnect solution across different scenarios. The Net-Net 9200 will perform codec-based routing as well as dynamic routing based on ENUM-based queries to NetNumber’s TITAN routing database. In addition, at the interconnect border, the Net-Net 9200 will perform transcoding between mobile and fixed-line networks. Call detail records (CDRs) will be collected by Psytechnics’ Experience Manger (EM) to deliver accurate subscriber QoE reporting for SLA assurance and network planning. In a related demonstration, Acme Packet’s Net-Net 4500 SBCs will utilize on-board routing databases to route sessions to the next signaling point in the network. Network changes will trigger dynamic route updates to Acme Packet’s Net-Net Route Manager Central, an integrated EMS application, which will automatically populate the Net-Net 4500 SBC routing database.

Platform demonstrations

Net-Net SLB and access SBC cluster
This demonstration will showcase the Net-Net 4500 session-aware load balancer (SLB) with a clustered configuration of sixteen Net-Net 4500 SBCs scaling to support 2 million subscribers, processing user registrations and voice sessions. In addition to high capacity, the demonstration will illustrate Acme Packet’s specialized routing and load balancing algorithms, as well as dynamic node addition and removal.

Net-Net EMS version 7.0
Net-Net EMS version 7.0 is Acme Packet’s next-generation element management system (EMS) for configuration, fault, performance, and security management for Acme Packet’s Net-Net product line. The new functionality of the Net-Net EMS version 7.0 that Acme Packet will demonstrated at Interconnect 2010 includes: dashboard summary views with “at a glance” device status and key performance indicators; new configuration view types; Net-Net EMS permissions based on NOC administrator functional role; access control lists for individual SBCs; and a re-designed user interface.

Net-Net platform family performance
During this demonstration, Acme Packet’s Net-Net 4500 and 9200 platforms will process massive numbers of SIP sessions generated by an EXFO QA-604 SIP load generator to demonstrate relative signaling performance across Acme Packet’s platforms. A next-generation CPU for the Net-Net 4500 improves signaling processing for that platform by approximately 50%, while the Net-Net 9200 continues to raise the performance bar for highly scalable SBC systems.

Simplified SBC configuration using Net-Net OS templates
Acme Packet will demonstrate how service providers can use Net-Net OS configuration templates to add numerous SIP trunks quickly and easily. Net-Net OS configuration templates simplify the configuration of Acme Packet SBCs, reducing configuration errors and increasing the rate of provisioning customers and services because common service profiles are created as templates, incorporating both default and customized configuration settings. A template can then be spawned into numerous individual “instances” to develop complete service profiles.

About Acme Packet
Acme Packet, Inc. (NASDAQ: APKT), the leader in session border control solutions, enables the delivery of trusted, first-class interactive communications – voice, video and multimedia sessions – and data services across IP network borders. Our Net-Net family of session border controllers, multiservice security gateways and session routing proxies supports multiple applications in service provider, enterprise and contact center networks--from VoIP trunking to hosted enterprise and residential services to fixed-mobile convergence. They satisfy critical security, service assurance and regulatory requirements in wireline, cable and wireless networks; and support multiple protocols--SIP, H.323, MGCP/NCS, H.248 and RTSP--and multiple border points--service provider access and interconnect, and enterprise access and trunking. Over 10,000 Acme Packet systems have been deployed by more than 1,000 customers in over 105 countries. They include 90 of the top 100 service providers in the world; and 11 of the Fortune 25. For more information, contact us at +1 781.328.4400, or visit www.acmepacket.com.

Acme Packet Safe Harbor Statement
Statements contained herein that are not historical fact may be forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Such forward-looking statements may relate, among other things, to our position in the session border control market, our expected financial and operating results, our ability to establish and maintain intellectual property rights, our ability to build and grow Acme Packet, the benefits and advantages of our products, including any enhancements or new features, services and programs, the performance of our products and systems at Interconnect 2010 and our ability to achieve our goals, plans and objectives. Such forward-looking statements do not constitute guarantees of future performance and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. These include, but are not limited to: difficulties in growing our customer base, difficulties leveraging market opportunities, difficulties providing solutions that meet the needs of customers, poor product sales, long sales cycles, difficulty developing new products, difficulty in relationships with vendors and partners, higher risk in international operations, difficulty managing rapid growth, and increased competition. Additional factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or suggested in any forward-looking statements are contained in our recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including those factors discussed under the caption “Risk Factors” in such filings.