Sigma Designs, Inc., a leader in digital media processing system-on-chip (SoC) solutions for consumer electronics, today announced that Ken Lowe, Sigma’s vice president of strategic marketing, will be speaking at this year’s Parks Associates CONNECTIONS™ Digital Living Conference. The panel, titled “Wireless Home Controls: New Roles and Functionality”, is scheduled for Thursday, June 4 at 11:15 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. PT in Ballroom F. The CONNECTIONS conference kicks off on Tuesday, June 2 and runs through Thursday, June 4 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Lowe will discuss wireless home controls and share his thoughts on the future of in-home mesh networks, what new technologies home enthusiasts can expect in the next few years and how Sigma’s Z-Wave devices accessed over the Internet can create a revolution in the wireless home network.
“Enabling wireless home control networks that can also be accessed from the Internet is an exciting next step in the direction of a modern digital home,” says Lowe. “With the continuous advancement of Z-Wave technology, consumers are now able to install a set of fully interoperable dimmers, switches, thermostats, cameras, and other home devices with the convenience of accessing them through their laptop or cell phone. With the focus on controlling energy use in the home, hundreds of Z-Wave products provide an off-the-shelf solution with this new remote management technology.”
Moderated by Bill Ablondi, Director of Home Systems Research at Parks Associates, panelists will discuss how the advancements in wireless technologies enable new configurations and opportunities in the connected home. This panel will discuss the technology trends, market opportunities, and design challenges in bringing new capabilities to market in familiar packages. Examples include a universal remote control (URC) that controls lights or locks the front door via a mobile phone or the ability for installers to connect security systems to garage doors, lighting controls, and HVAC systems.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Interview with SupportSoft's Bogdan Odulinski
Bogdan Odulinski, Director of Product Management, Enterprise Services Group, SupportSoft will be speaking at this year's CONNECTIONS Conference.
What is your company’s/division newest initiative?
We have recently announced Performance Manager which represents the first of many Value-Added Services (VAS) we will be adding to our portfolio. Performance Manager joins our latest Download Manager offering which uniquely automates the installation and upgrade of VAS. Based on repeated analysis of our customers’ call log data, we will continue to deliver pre-packaged products that address security, home networking, and other online-based and automation-focused content services that will both add value to our Dynamic Agent platform as well as deliver tangible cost reductions and revenue enablement opportunities to our customers.
What is your company’s biggest challenge?
Historically, our greatest challenge has been communicating our traditional support-focused message into one that includes revenue enablement. An important trend we have seen is the revenue enablement of traditional call center-based service and support; many providers have already begun to allow their customer service reps to offer Value Added Service in context to the support call when it is appropriate. For example, support organizations that have been our staple typically are not measured on revenue, therefore making it difficult to engage in conversations regarding the opportunity for those organizations to leverage our platform to drive post-sale and point-of-need revenue up-sells. This challenge has been made even more difficult because of the silos that exist within most service provider frameworks. These silos drastically limit a service and support organization’s ability to provide end-to-end service and support to their customers. Similarly, product managers at our customers often see service and support as a necessary ‘readiness’ hurdle they must overcome to launch product, rather than as the sales channel which it effectively is.
What do you perceive as your company’s greatest strength?
Our Dynamic Agent platform takes a holistic and automation-enabled approach to service delivery of any kind; ensuring the best customer experience in the context of sales or support, whether the preferred communications channel is voice, chat, email, or remote control. This, combined with our global service organization which enables our customers to integrate and implement our platform in unique and differentiating ways, has repeatedly won us business against some of the biggest names in the marketplace. Two key pieces that differentiate us include:
1. In order to achieve differentiation, service providers have to ‘know’ their customers. Our platform enables this knowledge.
2. In order to deploy differentiated services to as many customers as possible, providers need another vehicle besides web portals. Dynamic Agent utilizes skinning, targeting, and personalization capabilities to provide this differentiation and ensure maximum penetration of message.
What are your company’s long term goals?
When we talk about a holistic and automation-enabled approach to differentiating service, we envision our platform becoming even more robust with key service enablement components such as community portals, self-ticketing (SRM), and CRM, among others. We are very excited at the potential of providing an end-to-end service delivery platform that includes these elements to our existing and future customers in the near future.
What is your company’s most successful product/service?
By far, our Dynamic Agent, Chat, and Remote Control products represent the strongest offerings in our portfolio. Customers using these in an integrated manner, in combination with our support automation content as well as our Value Added Services such as Performance Manager, are experiencing the greatest success.
Bogdan Odulinski is speaking on the Driving the Next Dollar and Subscription: The Role of VAS panel on Wednesday, June 3rd at 11:15 AM.
What is your company’s/division newest initiative?
We have recently announced Performance Manager which represents the first of many Value-Added Services (VAS) we will be adding to our portfolio. Performance Manager joins our latest Download Manager offering which uniquely automates the installation and upgrade of VAS. Based on repeated analysis of our customers’ call log data, we will continue to deliver pre-packaged products that address security, home networking, and other online-based and automation-focused content services that will both add value to our Dynamic Agent platform as well as deliver tangible cost reductions and revenue enablement opportunities to our customers.
What is your company’s biggest challenge?
Historically, our greatest challenge has been communicating our traditional support-focused message into one that includes revenue enablement. An important trend we have seen is the revenue enablement of traditional call center-based service and support; many providers have already begun to allow their customer service reps to offer Value Added Service in context to the support call when it is appropriate. For example, support organizations that have been our staple typically are not measured on revenue, therefore making it difficult to engage in conversations regarding the opportunity for those organizations to leverage our platform to drive post-sale and point-of-need revenue up-sells. This challenge has been made even more difficult because of the silos that exist within most service provider frameworks. These silos drastically limit a service and support organization’s ability to provide end-to-end service and support to their customers. Similarly, product managers at our customers often see service and support as a necessary ‘readiness’ hurdle they must overcome to launch product, rather than as the sales channel which it effectively is.
What do you perceive as your company’s greatest strength?
Our Dynamic Agent platform takes a holistic and automation-enabled approach to service delivery of any kind; ensuring the best customer experience in the context of sales or support, whether the preferred communications channel is voice, chat, email, or remote control. This, combined with our global service organization which enables our customers to integrate and implement our platform in unique and differentiating ways, has repeatedly won us business against some of the biggest names in the marketplace. Two key pieces that differentiate us include:
1. In order to achieve differentiation, service providers have to ‘know’ their customers. Our platform enables this knowledge.
2. In order to deploy differentiated services to as many customers as possible, providers need another vehicle besides web portals. Dynamic Agent utilizes skinning, targeting, and personalization capabilities to provide this differentiation and ensure maximum penetration of message.
What are your company’s long term goals?
When we talk about a holistic and automation-enabled approach to differentiating service, we envision our platform becoming even more robust with key service enablement components such as community portals, self-ticketing (SRM), and CRM, among others. We are very excited at the potential of providing an end-to-end service delivery platform that includes these elements to our existing and future customers in the near future.
What is your company’s most successful product/service?
By far, our Dynamic Agent, Chat, and Remote Control products represent the strongest offerings in our portfolio. Customers using these in an integrated manner, in combination with our support automation content as well as our Value Added Services such as Performance Manager, are experiencing the greatest success.
Bogdan Odulinski is speaking on the Driving the Next Dollar and Subscription: The Role of VAS panel on Wednesday, June 3rd at 11:15 AM.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Monetizing Support Is About ‘Optimizing’ Contacts
This article submitted by SupportSoft
Bogdan Odulinski
SupportSoft, Inc.
Director, Product Management
Enterprise Solutions Group
Service providers have acknowledged that growing business, winning sales and expanding their customer base in an intensely competitive environment requires proactive programs to drive revenue. Add an unstable economy to the mix and this seems almost unattainable! Nonetheless, in their quest for growth and profitability, many are taking to transforming strategic operations such as the contact center/help desk where viable customer interactions take place and could be turned into sales. Once considered a ‘cost’ center, the view of the contact center is increasingly shifting to a new awareness that it can become a ‘profit’ center, or at least become cost neutral. The realization is that through successful up-selling of value-added services (VAS) including “premium” (paid) tech support, the contact center can help generate additional revenue for providers. This we call the monetization of support.
Key to monetizing support is that it’s about optimizing contacts rather than minimizing them. This is important to note because most support organizations’ vernacular focuses on “time to resolve”, “resolve in one” and “contact avoidance” activities—all of which do not recognize that there are ‘good’ calls which are in fact to be desired as well as ‘unnecessary’ contacts that do not provide value to either the customer or organization. Monetizing support requires the removal of internal silos that sequester support organizations to non-revenue generating activities. Historically, this sequestering has created poor customer experiences. An example of this is when a solution to a support problem handled by a call center service rep requires an up-sell -- if the call center is not equipped to handle the up-sell directly (if at all), customer expectations cannot be met.
Some providers have already started to enable their customer service reps (CSRs) to offer value-added services in connection to the support call when it is fitting. To help this to happen, they have had to determine how best to make critical sales and service/subscription data visible to their CSRs. Those providers got down to business by re-engineering their operations, changing service level agreements, adjusting customer expectations, and eliminating inherent boundaries across sales, service and support, thereby allowing agents to have a 360 degree view of the customer’s history. In so doing, their agents can now receive vital information about the issues that matter most to customers, and they can gain insight into customer goals and into what kind of offering is most likely to generate revenue. They can then translate these insights into successful up-selling.
Important to this discussion is that while monetizing support of the CSR-assisted phone and chat support channels is a good start, Contact Optimization is just as much about achieving the maximum efficiency in volume of customer requests across all other channels of support, including the self-help channel. Web-based and desktop-based self-help channels represent a largely untapped frontier for the monetization of support. Combining the ‘web-support’ and ‘pc-resident support’ framework can provide auto-remediation of customers’ routine problems so that they don’t have to call the help desk. By delivering “1-click fixes” to known “points of pain,” service providers can offer just-in-time support, as well as help customers resolve their own issues. Additionally, with real-time access to the customer’s context and system configuration, providers and their marketing organizations can be better armed with essential analytics to present targeted and personalized services in the framework of providing support. These could be premium, pre-packaged services that address home networking, security and warranty renewals, for instance, that can significantly enhance the end-user experience and can be turned into revenue more successfully.
Across the board, managing support and converting it into a revenue stream should be a major component of any service provider’s strategy, if they intend to differentiate their offering. The real question is will your organization take the necessary steps in time?
Bogdan Odulinski
SupportSoft, Inc.
Director, Product Management
Enterprise Solutions Group
Service providers have acknowledged that growing business, winning sales and expanding their customer base in an intensely competitive environment requires proactive programs to drive revenue. Add an unstable economy to the mix and this seems almost unattainable! Nonetheless, in their quest for growth and profitability, many are taking to transforming strategic operations such as the contact center/help desk where viable customer interactions take place and could be turned into sales. Once considered a ‘cost’ center, the view of the contact center is increasingly shifting to a new awareness that it can become a ‘profit’ center, or at least become cost neutral. The realization is that through successful up-selling of value-added services (VAS) including “premium” (paid) tech support, the contact center can help generate additional revenue for providers. This we call the monetization of support.
Key to monetizing support is that it’s about optimizing contacts rather than minimizing them. This is important to note because most support organizations’ vernacular focuses on “time to resolve”, “resolve in one” and “contact avoidance” activities—all of which do not recognize that there are ‘good’ calls which are in fact to be desired as well as ‘unnecessary’ contacts that do not provide value to either the customer or organization. Monetizing support requires the removal of internal silos that sequester support organizations to non-revenue generating activities. Historically, this sequestering has created poor customer experiences. An example of this is when a solution to a support problem handled by a call center service rep requires an up-sell -- if the call center is not equipped to handle the up-sell directly (if at all), customer expectations cannot be met.
Some providers have already started to enable their customer service reps (CSRs) to offer value-added services in connection to the support call when it is fitting. To help this to happen, they have had to determine how best to make critical sales and service/subscription data visible to their CSRs. Those providers got down to business by re-engineering their operations, changing service level agreements, adjusting customer expectations, and eliminating inherent boundaries across sales, service and support, thereby allowing agents to have a 360 degree view of the customer’s history. In so doing, their agents can now receive vital information about the issues that matter most to customers, and they can gain insight into customer goals and into what kind of offering is most likely to generate revenue. They can then translate these insights into successful up-selling.
Important to this discussion is that while monetizing support of the CSR-assisted phone and chat support channels is a good start, Contact Optimization is just as much about achieving the maximum efficiency in volume of customer requests across all other channels of support, including the self-help channel. Web-based and desktop-based self-help channels represent a largely untapped frontier for the monetization of support. Combining the ‘web-support’ and ‘pc-resident support’ framework can provide auto-remediation of customers’ routine problems so that they don’t have to call the help desk. By delivering “1-click fixes” to known “points of pain,” service providers can offer just-in-time support, as well as help customers resolve their own issues. Additionally, with real-time access to the customer’s context and system configuration, providers and their marketing organizations can be better armed with essential analytics to present targeted and personalized services in the framework of providing support. These could be premium, pre-packaged services that address home networking, security and warranty renewals, for instance, that can significantly enhance the end-user experience and can be turned into revenue more successfully.
Across the board, managing support and converting it into a revenue stream should be a major component of any service provider’s strategy, if they intend to differentiate their offering. The real question is will your organization take the necessary steps in time?
From Retrevo Pulse: Recession and Our Obsession with Gadgets!
Blog Post submitted by Vipin Jain, CEO, Retrevo
So what is it with us and our gadgets? We seem to be growing more passionate about them, whether it’s that shiny new petite digital camera with 12 megapixels, face recognition and optical image stabilization, or that Blu-ray Disc Player exhilarating us with all 2 million pixels delivered in our newly installed home theater system with a receiver that can blast lossless Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD master audio. Or maybe it’s that recently purchased Blackberry Storm that most of us have a love/hate relationship with and that is on the verge of becoming obsolete by Storm2 within months (with hopefully a better touch screen, usable software and WiFi). And even though we were almost scared to buy anything in the first few months of the year, we have now come back with a vengeance, scooping up all the latest and greatest gadgets we’ve always aspired to own to make our digital lives more productive and enjoyable.
Retrevo is releasing its monthly Pulse Report for May. Surprise, surprise... what do we see? Electronics shoppers are back in the market buying electronics but not just any electronics. We’re buying gadgets that are new and shiny, and we’re willing to pay higher prices for these innovative products that deliver the latest and greatest features. The most notable categories picking up momentum are Digital Cameras and Optical Disc Players (some of us are used to calling this category DVD Players but the introduction of Blu-ray changes the definition so it will take some getting used to).
Here are the specifics:
1. Optical Disc Players: more than a third of Optical Disc Players shipping now are Blu-ray. These Blu-ray players comprised less than 10% last holiday season. This transition to newer, hi-def technology has created an uplift in ASPs of > 20% post-holiday season. And in mid-April, demand started picking up for Optical Disc Players. So people are not only buying Optical Disc Players, they are spending more money than ever before to acquire the latest and greatest in hi-def.
2. Digital Cameras: more than 50% of shipping digital cameras now have optical image stabilization and face recognition making it easy to click and organize those precious memories. DSLR is also finding its way downstream with a more consumer friendly interface and form factors. Aided by general knowledge, consumers are buying these higher feature products and paying higher prices (10% higher than last holiday season). Digital Camera demand had been flat from Feb through April but it has picked up in May. So again, people are not only buying Digital Cameras but they are willing to pay higher prices to acquire the latest and greatest than ever before.
Now don't take me the wrong way. The fact that people are spending more money doesn't mean consumers aren't value conscious. In fact, a recent Retrevo Gadgetology analysis revealed that 76% of Consumer Electronics shoppers selected products based on good value (34%), Trusted sites and experts raving about a product/brand (25%) and other users raving about a product/brand (10%). The consumers are absolutely value conscious for the technology they wish to purchase, they just are not interested in buying cheapest products around without regard to the innovation.
So did we see any disappointment in Retrevo's Pulse Report? Absolutely. HDTVs and Home Theater Systems continue to disappoint consumers. Here is our analysis of these two categories:
1.Home Theater Systems: these were hot during the last holiday season but demand plummeted post-holiday season along with everything else. Prices after being stable for better part of this year started falling in mid-Apr (now down > 10%). Yet the demand has continued to fall. Why is this so when Optical Disc Players are picking up? Guess how many Home Theater Systems ship with a Blu-ray player? Less than 5%. Yes, while consumers can buy HDTVs and Blu-ray players to their heart's content, they can't find Home Theater Systems with a Blu-ray player. Yikes! Lesson learned? Don't assume consumers will keep buying stale products with no major innovation in sight for more than 6 months. And we are not talking about new innovation, HTS manufacturers just need to keep up with the market, follow the lead from HDTV and Blu-ray players and get more Blu out. There is pent-up demand. Amen to that!
2.HDTVs: this category is near and dear to my heart. High momentum in the first half and excess inventory in the second half of 2008 depressed prices to unrealistic levels last holiday season. Negative margins forced brands and retailers to raise prices post-holiday season as excess inventory cleared from the channel (ASPs up more than 30% from January to mid-April). Even though the category has gone through a refresh cycle in last few months (more than 50% of currently selling HDTVs were introduced this year) but demand hasn't picked up even after a technology refresh cycle. What is the innovation in HDTVs lately? Transition from 720p to 1080p? Yawn! Consumers are not biting. Let's work on the basics. Get the best out-of-the-box experience without worrying about ISF specs, calibration etc, get HDTVs to network and "simply" download content from your computer and from the Internet, and we will have a shot at making people spend more for the newer technology rather than simply gravitating to value brands for a seemingly commoditized technology.
What's the takeaway? Overall demand is soft (Retrevo's Demand Index shows a 15% decline year-over-year), lower demand doesn't translate into people buying cheap (and commoditized) technology. Consumers care about innovation, latest and greatest (in a meaningful way, not from marketing speak). Consumers are spending 20% more time researching and yes, they will want the best value and good quality products but at the same time, they will spend more for the innovation. So let's not slow down the pace of innovation. Let's push the envelope, think about ways to make our daily lives more connected, more productive and more enjoyable and we the consumers, will spend more money because it will be worth it. This is what I call Obsession for a Purpose!
So what is it with us and our gadgets? We seem to be growing more passionate about them, whether it’s that shiny new petite digital camera with 12 megapixels, face recognition and optical image stabilization, or that Blu-ray Disc Player exhilarating us with all 2 million pixels delivered in our newly installed home theater system with a receiver that can blast lossless Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD master audio. Or maybe it’s that recently purchased Blackberry Storm that most of us have a love/hate relationship with and that is on the verge of becoming obsolete by Storm2 within months (with hopefully a better touch screen, usable software and WiFi). And even though we were almost scared to buy anything in the first few months of the year, we have now come back with a vengeance, scooping up all the latest and greatest gadgets we’ve always aspired to own to make our digital lives more productive and enjoyable.
Retrevo is releasing its monthly Pulse Report for May. Surprise, surprise... what do we see? Electronics shoppers are back in the market buying electronics but not just any electronics. We’re buying gadgets that are new and shiny, and we’re willing to pay higher prices for these innovative products that deliver the latest and greatest features. The most notable categories picking up momentum are Digital Cameras and Optical Disc Players (some of us are used to calling this category DVD Players but the introduction of Blu-ray changes the definition so it will take some getting used to).
Here are the specifics:
1. Optical Disc Players: more than a third of Optical Disc Players shipping now are Blu-ray. These Blu-ray players comprised less than 10% last holiday season. This transition to newer, hi-def technology has created an uplift in ASPs of > 20% post-holiday season. And in mid-April, demand started picking up for Optical Disc Players. So people are not only buying Optical Disc Players, they are spending more money than ever before to acquire the latest and greatest in hi-def.
2. Digital Cameras: more than 50% of shipping digital cameras now have optical image stabilization and face recognition making it easy to click and organize those precious memories. DSLR is also finding its way downstream with a more consumer friendly interface and form factors. Aided by general knowledge, consumers are buying these higher feature products and paying higher prices (10% higher than last holiday season). Digital Camera demand had been flat from Feb through April but it has picked up in May. So again, people are not only buying Digital Cameras but they are willing to pay higher prices to acquire the latest and greatest than ever before.
Now don't take me the wrong way. The fact that people are spending more money doesn't mean consumers aren't value conscious. In fact, a recent Retrevo Gadgetology analysis revealed that 76% of Consumer Electronics shoppers selected products based on good value (34%), Trusted sites and experts raving about a product/brand (25%) and other users raving about a product/brand (10%). The consumers are absolutely value conscious for the technology they wish to purchase, they just are not interested in buying cheapest products around without regard to the innovation.
So did we see any disappointment in Retrevo's Pulse Report? Absolutely. HDTVs and Home Theater Systems continue to disappoint consumers. Here is our analysis of these two categories:
1.Home Theater Systems: these were hot during the last holiday season but demand plummeted post-holiday season along with everything else. Prices after being stable for better part of this year started falling in mid-Apr (now down > 10%). Yet the demand has continued to fall. Why is this so when Optical Disc Players are picking up? Guess how many Home Theater Systems ship with a Blu-ray player? Less than 5%. Yes, while consumers can buy HDTVs and Blu-ray players to their heart's content, they can't find Home Theater Systems with a Blu-ray player. Yikes! Lesson learned? Don't assume consumers will keep buying stale products with no major innovation in sight for more than 6 months. And we are not talking about new innovation, HTS manufacturers just need to keep up with the market, follow the lead from HDTV and Blu-ray players and get more Blu out. There is pent-up demand. Amen to that!
2.HDTVs: this category is near and dear to my heart. High momentum in the first half and excess inventory in the second half of 2008 depressed prices to unrealistic levels last holiday season. Negative margins forced brands and retailers to raise prices post-holiday season as excess inventory cleared from the channel (ASPs up more than 30% from January to mid-April). Even though the category has gone through a refresh cycle in last few months (more than 50% of currently selling HDTVs were introduced this year) but demand hasn't picked up even after a technology refresh cycle. What is the innovation in HDTVs lately? Transition from 720p to 1080p? Yawn! Consumers are not biting. Let's work on the basics. Get the best out-of-the-box experience without worrying about ISF specs, calibration etc, get HDTVs to network and "simply" download content from your computer and from the Internet, and we will have a shot at making people spend more for the newer technology rather than simply gravitating to value brands for a seemingly commoditized technology.
What's the takeaway? Overall demand is soft (Retrevo's Demand Index shows a 15% decline year-over-year), lower demand doesn't translate into people buying cheap (and commoditized) technology. Consumers care about innovation, latest and greatest (in a meaningful way, not from marketing speak). Consumers are spending 20% more time researching and yes, they will want the best value and good quality products but at the same time, they will spend more for the innovation. So let's not slow down the pace of innovation. Let's push the envelope, think about ways to make our daily lives more connected, more productive and more enjoyable and we the consumers, will spend more money because it will be worth it. This is what I call Obsession for a Purpose!
Interview with Lior Weiss, VP Marketing, Celeno
Celeno's Vice President of Marketing for Celeno responds to our interview questions...
What is your company's/division's newest initiative?
Celeno has announced today a strategic partnership with Ralink technology, one of the leaders in the WLAN semiconductors business. This partnership will enable Celeno to become a one-stop shop for its customers looking for an end to end video over Wi-Fi solution. Celeno also continues to push forward its latest initiative and provides the CL1300 to the Consumer Electronics (CE) space for wireless HDMI applications.
What is your company's biggest challenge?
Celeno has demonstrated that Video over Wi-Fi distribution is quiet challenging and requires special implementation at the silicon level. Celeno's OpimizAIR(TM) technology meets the challenge with cross-layer optimization at all levels: Antennas, silicon PHY and special MAC algorithms. Moreover, some far-sighted service providers and OEM's are already concerned about overbooking of the 5GHz spectrum - Celeno is working extensively with them to demonstrate techniques to overcome those concerns.
What are your company's long term goals?
Celeno is currently busy to secure a tier one service provider deployment at both North America and Europe as well as landing a meaningful design win with a CE OEM. We are aiming to become leaders at the WLAN semiconductors space for multimedia and video applications.
What is your company's most successful product/service?
The Celeno CL1300 is a Wi-Fi MAC/PHY baseband semiconductor aimed at optimized Video over Wi-Fi solutions. It gives Service providers and CE OEM's a carrier-grade solution with the right combination of throughput, range and robustness for wire-like quality of experience for multiple HD streams. The CL1300 becomes the corner stone for products that handle such applications and use cases as IPTV home distribution, DLNA multimedia devices, Wireless TV sets, Media centers, etc.
What do you perceive as your company's greatest strength?
Celeno has mastered the art of phased array beam forming MIMO
techniques. This technology which is optimized for video distribution
(compared to the plain vanilla Spatial multiplexing MIMO) excels
performance in rich multipath home environment and helps to achieve
whole home coverage for multi-room use cases. Moreover, Celeno has a
novel implementation of Implicit beam forming that enables this
technology without any protocol collaboration with the client device,
hence easing off interoperability and making the technology deployable
today. Moreover, it allows OEM's and manufactures to mix and match AP
WiFi chipset and client WiFi chipsets enhancing flexibility and price
competitiveness.
What is your company's/division's newest initiative?
Celeno has announced today a strategic partnership with Ralink technology, one of the leaders in the WLAN semiconductors business. This partnership will enable Celeno to become a one-stop shop for its customers looking for an end to end video over Wi-Fi solution. Celeno also continues to push forward its latest initiative and provides the CL1300 to the Consumer Electronics (CE) space for wireless HDMI applications.
What is your company's biggest challenge?
Celeno has demonstrated that Video over Wi-Fi distribution is quiet challenging and requires special implementation at the silicon level. Celeno's OpimizAIR(TM) technology meets the challenge with cross-layer optimization at all levels: Antennas, silicon PHY and special MAC algorithms. Moreover, some far-sighted service providers and OEM's are already concerned about overbooking of the 5GHz spectrum - Celeno is working extensively with them to demonstrate techniques to overcome those concerns.
What are your company's long term goals?
Celeno is currently busy to secure a tier one service provider deployment at both North America and Europe as well as landing a meaningful design win with a CE OEM. We are aiming to become leaders at the WLAN semiconductors space for multimedia and video applications.
What is your company's most successful product/service?
The Celeno CL1300 is a Wi-Fi MAC/PHY baseband semiconductor aimed at optimized Video over Wi-Fi solutions. It gives Service providers and CE OEM's a carrier-grade solution with the right combination of throughput, range and robustness for wire-like quality of experience for multiple HD streams. The CL1300 becomes the corner stone for products that handle such applications and use cases as IPTV home distribution, DLNA multimedia devices, Wireless TV sets, Media centers, etc.
What do you perceive as your company's greatest strength?
Celeno has mastered the art of phased array beam forming MIMO
techniques. This technology which is optimized for video distribution
(compared to the plain vanilla Spatial multiplexing MIMO) excels
performance in rich multipath home environment and helps to achieve
whole home coverage for multi-room use cases. Moreover, Celeno has a
novel implementation of Implicit beam forming that enables this
technology without any protocol collaboration with the client device,
hence easing off interoperability and making the technology deployable
today. Moreover, it allows OEM's and manufactures to mix and match AP
WiFi chipset and client WiFi chipsets enhancing flexibility and price
competitiveness.
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