NetCracker Acquires Professional Services Firm

Acquisition of Firma AVD increases breadth and depth of NetCracker's OSS Solution offering

Waltham, MA – August 31, 2004 – NetCracker Technology, a leading provider of OSS solutions, announced today that it has acquired Firma AVD, a European professional services company specializing in providing system integration, business process engineering, and IT consulting to telecommunications service providers.

"This acquisition is a logical extension of both our growth and our relationship with Firma AVD," said Andrew Feinberg, President & CEO of NetCracker, "We have recently added a number of customers around the globe including Telstra in Australia, Covad and North America, Swisscom in Europe and others, and we are aggressively growing our organization. The acquisition of Firma AVD aids us in expanding our employee base to better serve the market."

Firma AVD, founded in 1997 and privately held, was headquartered in Moscow, Russia. NetCracker and Firma AVD have had a close working relationship, partnering on professional services delivery. This acquisition further expands NetCracker's professional services delivery capabilities and comes on the heels of NetCracker's recent announcement of a global employee recruitment campaign as well as the announcement of a number of tier one wins.

Galina Grodneva, General Director of Firma AVD, stated, "This acquisition makes sense for both sides. We look forward to approaching our customers and providing software delivery services as a single business entity."

"Our success in the market place is largely due to our relentless customer focus and lately our customers have been demanding that we expand our solutions to include robust implementation services. The acquisition of Firma AVD brings NetCracker a talented group of professionals already experienced in implementing our products and enables us to quickly yet cautiously expand our delivery capabilities around the world," added Feinberg.

NetCracker solutions address service providers' most pressing OSS challenges enabling them to deliver telecom services to the market more rapidly and profitably. NetCracker OSS solutions are a combination of software, services and expertise that help service providers automate and streamline inventory management and provisioning processes and manage telecommunications assets throughout their entire lifecycle. Some of NetCracker's OSS products include Network Inventory Management, Order Management, Asset Management and Outside Plant. At the core of the NetCracker application is the 100% web-based NetCracker OSS Engine, which includes NetCracker's workflow and facilitates information sharing among NetCracker products and third party applications. Architecturally open, NetCracker products can seamlessly integrate with any OSS component including commercial-off-the-shelf software as well as homegrown applications.

About NetCracker Technology

NetCracker Technology, a subsidiary of NEC Corporation, is the leading provider of Telecom Operations and Management Systems to Communications Service Providers worldwide. www.NetCracker.com.

NetCracker is a registered trademark of NetCracker Technology Corp. All other company or product names mentioned in this media alert may be trademarks or registered trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

About NEC Corporation

NEC Corporation is one of the world's leading providers of Internet, broadband network and enterprise business solutions dedicated to meeting the specialized needs of a diversified global base of customers. NEC delivers tailored solutions in the key fields of computer, networking and electron devices, by integrating its technical strengths in IT and Networks, and by providing advanced semiconductor solutions through NEC Electronics Corporation. The NEC Group employs more than 140,000 people worldwide. For additional information, please visit the NEC website at: http://www.nec.com.