CONNECTIONS at CES addresses Operator Strategies, Connected CE, Smart Grid, Video Everywhere

Parks Associates announced the Call For Papers for the upcoming CONNECTIONS™ Summit at CES, taking place January 6 at 2011 International CES in Las Vegas. This event provides consumer data and analysis of business and marketing strategies for operators, CE manufacturers, utilities, and communications companies delivering connected devices and advanced services and applications to consumers.

During the first day of CES, Parks Associates analysts will moderate interactive panel sessions featuring leading industry executives on the following topics:

-- Operator Strategies: Video, Services, and Support
-- Monetizing Connected Consumer Electronics
-- Energy Utility Executive Roundtable: The Smart Grid & Home Area Network
-- Anytime Anywhere Entertainment & Communication
--Video Everywhere: Key Strategies

CONNECTIONS™ Summit begins with a roundtable discussion featuring Parks Associates analysts. This session will highlight key consumer and technology trends on core areas of research:

-- CE buying patterns in the recession
-- Broadband value-added services
-- Key trends in video services
-- Maturation of home networking technologies and applications
-- Consumer demand and the business case for connected CE
-- Mobile communications, broadband, and device trends
-- The new era of 3DTV
-- Trends in advertising
-- Consumer support services
-- Home systems
-- Health, energy, and home monitoring

TELUS Builds IP Next-Generation Network Cloud Services Using Cisco Unified Service Delivery Technology

Cisco announced that TELUS is enhancing its service delivery network using Cisco Unified Service Delivery. The solution combines the power of the data center with the power of the network to transform service delivery and build a foundation for cloud services.

This deployment is central to TELUS' primary goal of further expanding delivery of best-in-class managed services and delivering a comprehensive range of world-class, innovative data and communications services.

As customer demand for advanced managed services increases along with a growing interest in flexible cloud-based services, TELUS has been building its national infrastructure to enable expansion of its managed services to meet the evolving needs of enterprise and small-business customers. To deliver quality solutions, TELUS has extended its investment in the Cisco Nexus 2000, Cisco Nexus 5000 and Cisco Nexus 7000 switching platforms in data center facilities across Canada.

TELUS chose the Cisco Nexus platform for its ability to combine Ethernet, Internet Protocol (IP) and storage capabilities across one unified network fabric. The platform is an essential part of Unified Service Delivery, a solution that not only unifies data center resources but enables peering and interconnecting between data centers. These capabilities facilitate service integration, flexibility and agility in delivering entertainment, information and communication-based services.

The Cisco Nexus family of switches helps customers reduce total cost of ownership, accelerate business growth and extend the life cycle of current infrastructure by making the data center more efficient, responsive and resilient.

TELUS is taking advantage of the reliability, scalability and flexibility of Cisco Unified Service Delivery to offer a range of cloud-based infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) managed services. TELUS Managed IT solutions provide customers with the flexibility to out-task IT systems management according to their particular business requirements – from provisioning servers for customer-facing websites to offering fully out-tasked customized solutions, including end-to-end management of networks, desktops, servers and storage. For more information, click here.

Accelerating Service Launch with Telcordia Activator

Telcordia, a global leader in the development of IP, wireline and mobile telecommunication software and services, announced a breakthrough in the speed of introduction of new telecom services and network devices with the latest release of its next gen service activation product, Telcordia® Activator.

Until now, communication service providers' (CSPs') programs to introduce additional services have relied on vendors developing extra software to support new processes, services or device types. This significantly added to the cost, complexity and time to bring new products to market at scale. But through its innovative modelling and scripting technologies, Telcordia Activator eliminates the need for specialized adapter software development. This removes a complete set of development-related costs and time from the new service introduction process; typically shrinking the project timescale from months to weeks.

Total cost of ownership is also reduced compared to traditional activation solutions, since services can be extended or created in-house without the need for expensive development resources.

With Telcordia Activator, CSPs can now consolidate and automate all service activation on a single, flexible platform that significantly boosts accuracy and speed, and ensures a flawless first-time customer experience.

Available as a standalone activation platform that can be integrated with any existing Operations Support System (OSS), Telcordia Activator is also pre-integrated with Telcordia Next Generation OSS including Telcordia® Granite Inventory.

For more information about Telcordia please visit www.telcordia.com. For more information about Telcordia Activator visit www.telcordia.com/products/activator/index.html.