Slovenia's Iskratel and IBM Respond Faster to Skyrocketing Consumer Demand for Mobile Applications

ROME, May 20 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced it is collaborating with Iskratel, a leading telecommunications equipment company serving 20 countries in Central and Eastern Europe, to help Communications Service Providers (CSPs) respond three times faster to a growing number of tech savvy consumers demanding more data-intensive applications and services including ringtones, music and video downloads, instant messaging, GPS, traffic alerts and stock trades.

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Now more than ever, CSPs need to respond with greater speed to handle millions of subscribers in microseconds.  In addition, they need to respond to an increasing number of requests for unstructured data generated from a variety of sources such as blogs, web content, social media websites and email.  Using IBM solidDB, Iskratel has dramatically augmented the speed of transactions the system can handle, reaching two million busy hour call attempts.  A 30 percent increase in its system efficiency has also resulted in better network reliability, fewer dropped calls and faster downloads.

Between now and 2014, data traffic on the mobile network will increase 39 times, with more than 5 billion wirelessly connected personal devices adding to the load.  In addition, sophisticated mobile users are constantly looking for the next compelling, content rich, interactive application - creating an enormous market opportunity for this industry. Traditional telecommunications companies who don't adapt their business to address this may find themselves sidelined by emerging players.

With the intense competition from well-established global players in their region, as well as from the United States and China, Iskratel selected IBM solidDB, IBM's relational, in-memory database software to help them deliver innovative products, solutions and applications in the telecommunications space, that would enable them to succeed in new markets.  

Iskratel has built a faster and more flexible service delivery platform that allows shorter time-to-market for new data-intensive services  such as voice calls, wireless voice, video, music and ringtone downloads, web browsing, and instant messaging.  

With the new solution, Iskratel is helping communications service providers build smart networks that are infused with advanced analytics and collect relevant data from them. With this solution, they have built on a foundation of standards and software that allow trillions of devices and objects to "talk" in real time.  

"The business model of investing in telecommunications is constantly changing, especially with the advent of advanced mobile devices and Internet savvy consumers. The priority is given to projects with a short ROI, and only those who meet the growing demand of today's consumers who want information at their fingertips will succeed," said Mr. Andrej Ciglie, Executive Director R&D, Iskratel.  "The collaboration with IBM is helping Iskratel design innovative products to meet the demand of existing networks as well as the new demand of convergent networks that can be adapted to the particular regional needs and to subscribers' preferences."

"The industry is seeing a new era of multimedia, in which voice, data, video and images are creating a market opportunity for CSPs to develop mobile applications and services to help make our lives more efficient," said Scott Stainken, general manager for IBM's Telecommunications Industry. "IBM's software, services and industry expertise help Iskratel to lay the foundation to deliver new innovative services faster, easier, and at lower cost."

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SOURCE IBM