Polycom And Insight Systems Partner to Deliver Billing And Usage Reporting Systems For Converged Collaboration Services

PLEASANTON, Calif. and ATLANTA, Aug. 28, 2002 -- Polycom®, Inc. (NASDAQ: PLCM), a worldwide leader in the convergence of interactive voice, video, data and web communications, and Insight Systems, Inc., a leading provider of operations support solutions (OSS) for the telecommunications industry, today announced an alliance to combine real-time conference call detail records (CDR) capture and usage reporting systems with Polycom's line of multipoint control units (MCU) for voice and video conferencing. This offering gives service providers a unique, customizable data capture tool for extracting user data for easy integration with their billing systems.

This flexible solution combines the Polycom MGC voice, video and web conferencing platform with ZyrOSS^(TM) Data Collector to deliver a feature-rich, real-time data to charge for conferencing services for service providers. The solution enables users to select from a variety of reports or create customer output files to export into existing operation support systems, such as quality and revenue assurance. These services are essential to operations departments to ensure the proper accounting of conferencing and billing activities.

"Service providers and corporate accounting departments can use this near real-time data to charge based on the actual number of participants or the actual minutes used. This usage data is also useful to systems supporting revenue assurance, operations quality assurance, and capacity management," says Scott Plante, chief technology officer of Insight Systems.

The ZyrOSS Data Collector automatically collects and delivers highly configurable usage detail in a format easily processed by billing and charge-back systems. According to a schedule set by the user, the Collector queries the CDRs produced by Polycom MCUs and gateways. It then correlates, assembles, and distributes the usage detail in user-configurable XML and ASCII formats (fixed-width and delimited). When scheduling outputs, the user has three destination options: local or shared network drive, FTP address, and HTTP posting. The Collector is based on Java™ technology and can be installed on a variety of platforms, including Windows NT/2000, Linux, and Solaris.

With the development of the ZyrOSS Data Collector, Insight Systems begins an important partnership with Polycom. "An emerging trend in video services is on-demand or reservationless conferencing," said Dave Gallagher, vice president of business development for network systems at Polycom. "Over time, people will expect to hold video conferences without scheduling them through their service providers. And as these types of conferences, which do not generate reservation data for billing and charge-backs, become more common, capturing the MCU and gateway usage data becomes even more critical."

About Polycom
Polycom, Inc. develops, manufactures and markets a full range of high-quality, easy-to-use and affordable voice and video communication endpoints, video management software, web collaboration software, multi-network gateways, and multi-point conferencing and network access solutions. Its fully integrated end-to-end solution, The Polycom Office^(TM), is supported by the Polycom Accelerated Communications Architecture, and enables business users to immediately realize the benefits of integrated video, voice data and web collaboration over rapidly growing converged networks. For additional information, call 1-800-POLYCOM (765-9266) or +1-408-526-9000, or visit the Polycom web site at www.polycom.com.

About Insight Systems
A privately held company based in Atlanta, Georgia, Insight Systems has designed and developed operations support solutions for the telecommunications industry for more than 17 years. The ZyrOSS Data Collector marks the company's entry into the packaged solutions market. Future ZyrOSS products will meet a variety of operations support needs for the telecom industry. For more information, call 1-800-404-6748 or +1-404-873-0058, ext. 318. Or visit the ZyrOSS web site at www.ZyrOSS.com or the Insight Systems corporate site at www.insightsystems.com. ZyrOSS is a trademark of Insight Systems Inc. Polycom and the Polycom logo are registered trademarks and Polycom VoicePlus and The Polycom Office are trademarks of Polycom in the U.S. and various countries. ©2002, Polycom, Inc. All rights reserved. All other brands and names are the property of their respective owners