ONI Systems Wins NCF 2001 InfoVision Award for its Technological Advancements


SAN JOSE, Calif., Nov. 7, 2001 (PRIMEZONE) -- ONI Systems Corp. (Nasdaq:ONIS), a leading provider of optical telecommunications systems for the metropolitan and regional markets, today announced that the ONI OPTX(tm) Management Portal has been awarded the National Communications Forum (NCF) 2001 InfoVision Award. Sponsored by the International Engineering Consortium (IEC), the NCF InfoVision award recognizes technologies, applications, products and services based on technological advancement, industry impact and end-user marketability and adoption.

"The InfoVision Awards are committed to recognizing and applauding those companies that not only strive for and achieve excellence, but also whose vision results in a positive impact on the growth and advancement of the industry," stated John Janowiak, senior director of IEC. "ONI Systems' OPTX Management Portal has achieved a level of excellence well-deserving of this recognition."

"We are very honored to receive this recognition. We worked closely with our customers who are providing VPON services to define the features and requirements of the OPTX Management Portal application," said Rusty Cumpston, executive vice president and COO at ONI Systems. "They challenged us to engineer a software application that would enable their enterprise and business customers to directly manage their leased services. The OPTX Management Portal provides an intuitive Web-based end-user management to change services, add new services, monitor faults and track performance of their services to verify SLAs."

The OPTX Management Portal software was designed for the ONLINE(tm) access, metro and regional transport platforms. It allows service providers -- like Sphera Optical Networks, Inc., that uses it today -- to provide self-service management of leased Virtual Private Optical Network (VPON) services over a secure Web browser. The service provider's customers can dynamically activate, groom and monitor wavelength, SONET/SDH, and data services. The list of features offered by the OPTX Management Portal includes the ability to view and generate performance monitoring (PM) reports in real-time to validate Service Level Agreements (SLAs). The secure, scalable and reliable customer network management (CNM) application enables carriers to offer highly differentiated revenue generating VPON services, while reducing operations costs as empowered customers manage their own leased services.

"The OPTX Management Portal application provides a key component of SpheraCore, Sphera's Customer Network Management portfolio of self-care capabilities. The OPTX Management Portal gives our customers real-time, secure Web-based visibility into the health of the services they buy from us, as well as direct configuration control for our Optical VPN customers," added John Pfaff, CIO for Sphera. "For over a year, we have been working very closely with ONI to help define features and requirements that make OPTX Management Portal and SpheraCore a differentiator in the services Sphera provides. And we have been consistently delighted with the quality and speed with which they have delivered capabilities that push the envelope. We congratulate ONI for being awarded the InfoVision award for their technological advancements."

ONI was recognized during the plenary keynote and InfoVision 2001 Awards ceremony at the National Communications Forum in Chicago, Illinois on October 31, 2001.

About ONI Systems

ONI Systems (Nasdaq:ONIS) develops, markets and sells optical networking equipment specifically designed to address bandwidth and service limitations of regional and metropolitan networks. Our products allow communication service providers to rapidly build high-capacity networks that are flexible, scalable and able to support multiple services on a single platform. Our products include the ONLINE11000, ONLINE9000, ONLINE7000, and ONLINE2500 transport platforms; the ONWAVE(tm) OC-48 and OC-192 SONET/SDH Add/Drop Multiplexers and the ONWAVE Data Multiplexer; and OC-192/STM-64 (10 gigabits per second) interface. The ONLINE(tm) transport platforms are complemented by our OPTX(tm) Software Suite for end-to-end wavelength and service management capabilities. The OPTX Software Suite includes the OPTX Network Manager, OPTX Network Designer, OPTX Management Portal, OPTX Network Operating System (NOS) and more, as well as the OLMP(tm) optical link management protocol suite for standards-based internetworking. ONI's new headquarters is located at 5965 Silver Creek Valley Road, San Jose, CA 95138. For additional information about ONI and its products, visit the company Web site at www.oni.com.

ONI Systems, ONI, the ONI logo, ONLINE, OPTX, OLMP and ONWAVE are trademarks or registered trademarks of ONI Systems Corp. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

This press release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and is subject to the safe harbor created by this section. Except for historical information, the matters discussed in this press release are forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, our limited operating history which makes forecasting our future revenue and operating results difficult, our ability to develop and to achieve market acceptance of new products, our dependence on a small number of customers, our ability to add additional customers, our dependence on sole or limited source suppliers for several key components and current economic and market conditions. These and other risks and uncertainties are described from time-to-time in ONI Systems' filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including ONI Systems' quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2001, ONI Systems' annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2000 and other documents on file with the SEC.


            

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