Italtel, a leading provider of solutions, products and services for next generation IP networks, and BEA Systems, a world leader in enterprise and communications infrastructure software, have announced a partnership designed to enable service providers to offer new convergent digital services to end users.
The strategic partnership leverages BEA Systems’ proven experience in the IT and telecom industries and the expertise that Italtel has acquired in telecommunications network architecture, both in Italy and in international markets.
Completing an important milestone in this partnership, Italtel has achieved certification of its platform with BEA WebLogic SIP Server as part of the 3GPP standard for IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) networks, and is leveraging BEA WebLogic Communications Platform products, which include BEA WebLogic SIP Server and BEA WebLogic Network Gatekeeper, as its preferred IMS service layer platform.
The convergence of IT and telecom is radically reshaping vendor business models and competitive borders, creating a continually-changing scenario for both products and services. The Italtel and BEA partnership is already well established and will now progress even further to bring a new platform of services to the market, creating an architectural model that can enable service providers to rapidly redevelop the services they offer while protecting past investments, guaranteeing time-to-market and containing implementation costs of new services.
One of the tangible results from this partnership is that Italtel has completed interoperability testing of its HSS 1.0 product with BEA WebLogic SIP Server as part of the 3GPP standard for IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) networks.
Network operators worldwide are actively deploying IP-based, converged, multimedia networks based on the IMS architecture. To maximize the revenue potentials of IMS networks, operators are looking to deploy a powerful, feature-rich IMS Services Layer. BEA and Italtel are enabling the creation of new IMS services based on the first converged Java EE-SIP-IMS application server, BEA WebLogic SIP Server, and a flexible Telecom SOA services environment for operators and content providers, using BEA AquaLogic Service Bus and BEA WebLogic Network Gatekeeper.
“This partnership with BEA Systems, a world leader in communications infrastructure software, can help Italtel to expand and strengthen its own range of products and services towards solutions designed to integrate IT and Telecom components, which can benefit all players on the market who are participating in the process of digital convergence that is currently underway,” said Claudio Chiarenza, vice president and general manager of Italtel. “BEA and Italtel are committed to creating a new architectural model that will provide innovative services on the various different types of network, protect investments and ensure continuity from existing systems.”
“The European telecom market continues to expand at a rapid rate and customer demand for new, innovative, next-generation services is unprecedented, said Mike McHugh, vice president and general manager, BEA Systems. “The BEA and Italtel partnership leverages BEA’s leading telecom technologies and Italtel’s solid know how in next generation IP networks can help service providers meet and exceed this demands”.