2008 IPTV Excellence Awards

It’s clear that after several years of trials and false starts, the IPTV (News - Alert) industry is firmly on track for sustained growth and success. Market research indicates that this is indeed the case. Numbers from Multimedia Research Group, Inc. (MRG) point to the number of global IPTV subscribers growing from 24 million in 2008 to 92.8 million in 2012, a compound annual growth rate of 31 percent. Revenue over that timeframe is expected to grow from $7.2 billion in 2008 growing to $31.6 billion in 2012, a compound annual growth rate of 34.5 percent.

INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine has been following the IPTV market for quite some time now, and we felt that the vendors serving this market were in need of some recognition, for their contributions to the growth and innovation displayed in the IPTV market. The award winners all submitted applications for consideration, and only the best and most compelling solutions were ultimately judged to be worthy of our inaugural 2008 IPTV Excellence Award.

Brief descriptions of the award wining products appear below. The editors of Internet Telephony (News - Alert) magazine applaud this year’s winners.

IBM

www.ibm.com
Converged Communications Services — IPTV and Triple Play (News - Alert) Infrastructure
The IPTV and triple play infrastructure from IBM includes consulting, integration, and deployment services to design, deploy and support IPTV infrastructure solutions for Tier 2 and smaller Tier 1 service providers and ISPs that want to differentiate, utilize more of their current networks, and enter new service areas by providing TV/Video and carrier IP voice-based services for their customers. IBM (News - Alert) can help clients develop a business case and help design and deploy an IPTV infrastructure solution that meets the client’s immediate and long term business objectives, while also establishing an ideal platform for future growth using converged service provider network.

Internap (News - Alert) Network Services

www.internap.com
Internap IPTV Solutions
Internap provides an integrated solution to deploy customized video experiences for viewing “channels” of live or on-demand TV programming across the Internet. With Internap, content providers are able to deploy a secure, reliable, and scalable IPTV infrastructure to deliver broadcast quality entertainment and communications to a large global audience regardless of location, size, or device. Internap IPTV Solutions can be purchased as individual services or as a turn-key, outsourced technology infrastructure. The entire solution is deployed via Internap’s technology infrastructure platform of 42 data centers and 56 network service points that extends around the world.

The IPTV Solutions portfolio includes:

• Content Delivery Network;
• Performance IP network;
• Data Center Colocation Space;
• Digital Asset Management and Rights Management;
• Monetization Tools;
• Professional Services; and more.

Ixia (News - Alert)

www.ixiacom.com
IxRAVE
IxRave is an end-to-end remote network and service validation platform for IPTV/triple play providers. It enables carriers, service providers and enterprises to actively isolate faults, verify that end-customers are receiving IPTV services, ensure the services are working according to SLAs, and then continually monitor their networks remotely. IxRave is a cost-effective, scalable solution that integrates with carriers’ operation support systems (OSS) and provides active rather than passive IPTV service validation. IxRave uses inexpensive probes deployed along network edges to perform real-time active network validation and ensure end-to-end video quality of experience for subscribers. With IxRave, IPTV providers can remotely track the quality of service for customer specific applications by following the actual path the video takes getting to the end user.

IBM	www.ibm.com	Converged Communications Services - IPTV and Triple Play Infrastructure
Internap Network Services	www.internap.com	Internap IPTV Solutions
Ixia	www.ixiacom.com	IxRAVE
RADVISION	www.radvision.com	Multimedia Terminal Framework
Redback Networks (News - Alert)	www.redback.com	SmartEdge 1200
Shenick (News - Alert) Network Systems	www.shenick.com	diversifEye10G
Thomson (News - Alert)	www.thomsontelecompartner.com	SmartVision IPTV Service Platform

RADVISION

www.radvision.com
Multimedia Terminal Framework
The Multimedia Terminal Framework can be utilized by vendors to integrate live person-to-person video conferencing to the set top boxes (STB), enriching the interactivity of the IPTV experience. The Multimedia Terminal Framework allows application developers to focus on functionality rather than standard specifications when developing equipment such as IP STBs. The IP STB is fast becoming the entertainment epicenter of the digital home. Adding live, person-to-person video communications is the next step in enhancing the user experience. Chipset vendors and IP STB developers can incorporate RADVISION technology into their solutions, enabling these innovative new services to be offered to end users.

Redback Networks, an Ericsson (News - Alert) Company

www.redback.com
SmartEdge 1200
Redback’s SmartEdge 1200 is a million subscriber rack for triple-play services such as HDTV, HD VoD and broadband mobility. The routing innovation behind the SmartEdge platform is at the center of Ericsson’s efforts to deliver ‘full service broadband.’ By connecting wired and wireless networks, Ericsson will enable a world where any network can deliver any service to any Internet-enabled device. The SmartEdge 1200 platform introduces three major innovations: It doubles carrier capacity for new video upgrades, extends triple-play services to broadband mobile networks and integrates up to six network applications into a single router. New network applications include deep-packet inspection for peer-to-peer traffic management, advanced session border capabilities and network security for carriers and their customers.

Shenick Network Systems

www.shenick.com
diversifEye10G
diversifEye10G is the world’s first high-performance10Gbps STATEFUL IP application traffic emulator, supporting a full range of Layer 2–7 tests in a single module. The solution offers an extreme level of stateful, converged services and IP application traffic emulation and performance testing. diversifEye10G reflects the real stresses induced by the aggregated triple play of IPTV, VoD, VoIP and data applications from access to network core. In addition, networks must cope with the proliferation of security attacks such as DDoS, SPAM and viruses. diversifEye10G offers the ability to launch massive security attacks to really test the capability of networks to mitigate against such intrusions while still offering a high-quality end user experience.

Thomson

www.thomsontelecompartner.com
SmartVision IPTV Service Platform
The SmartVision IPTV Service Platform provides network operators with a powerful and cost-efficient tool for distribution of advanced video and multimedia services over any network to any device. The SmartVision IPTV service management platform allows service providers to centralize system administration and supervision. Using dedicated Web portals, the SmartVision TV platform enables users to manage content and service subscriptions. SmartVision supports multiple digital rights management systems for both live and on-demand programs and flexibly manages billings. It addresses key quality of service standards through built-in bandwidth control and regulation. Using the SmartVision on screen portal, users can easily access a range of features including live TV reception, electronic TV program guides (EPG), mosaic presentation of TV programs, videoon- demand (VOD), subscription VOD, interactive services, personal video recording (PVR), and voice over IP (VoIP) services, as well as game and e-commerce applications. IT

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