May 7, 2002--The University of Miami has completed the initial integration of the ONLINE2500 optical edge service platform from ONI Systems (www.oni.com) into its network to connect their campus and support critical Web-based applications, including medical and earth science research. The new network is expected to provide the university with significant savings in operational and maintenance cost.

A Q1 '02 customer, the university has live traffic on the network today, which is generated by their School of Medicine and the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. The medical school, located on the campus in downtown Miami, adjoins the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Medical Center in downtown Miami, while the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science is located at their waterfront campus on Virginia Key in Biscayne Bay and operates a remote earth satellite collection facility in South Miami-Dade County. The ONI network is the first step in an on-going infrastructure program for expanding the university's network, preparing themselves for growth of voice and data traffic.

"All of our doctors' appointments, our medical records, and our science research are shared through Web-based applications," said Dr. M. Lewis Temares, vice president for information technology and dean of the College of Engineering. "Access to the Web is extremely important for us. With this in mind, we selected ONI."

"High-speed connectivity to NASA and other satellite operators is a critical underpinning for the University's earth remote sensing science research," said Dr. Otis Brown, dean of the Rosenstiel School. "The ONI infrastructure ties together our external Internet 2 partners with the distributed satellite data collection and analysis facilities on three University of Miami campuses in a seamless way and facilitates collaboration."

The latest member of the ONLINE transport family, the ONLINE2500 is being utilized by the university to connect its PBX systems throughout the campuses, consolidating the connections and routing of calls on their telecom backbone. In addition, the ONLINE2500 transports and manages the university's Gigabit Ethernet traffic, and is being utilized to distribute SAN applications and provide protected data connections for Web-based applications.