Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Intel have jointly opened two IPTV test centers designed to help telephone carriers and broadband providers take advantage of the opportunities of the emerging IP technology.
At the two IPTV Centers of Excellence, located in Grenoble, France, and Richardson, TX, HP and Intel offer carriers and broadband providers state-of-the-art working environments where they can design and develop the infrastructure they need to deliver a successful IPTV service. The facilities allow for performance and scalability evaluation, characterization, sizing, full proof-of-concept testing and integration of IPTV solutions into the network and the operational and business support systems.
The centers have been developed to help accelerate deployment of new revenue-producing IPTV services, as well as reduce the related costs. The centers also address the service providers' need for a single facility where they can test and validate IPTV solutions and resolve problems before the solution is deployed for subscribers.
At the centers, service providers will use HP ProLiant servers and server blades with the recently announced Dual-Core Intel Xeon processor series, as well as HP Integrity servers with Intel Itanium 2 processors. They will also have access to HP's professional services, HP service management solutions for IPTV and HP content management and distribution expertise. The centers will also include Intel technologies such as virtualization, active management and input/output acceleration.
HP and Intel have defined six areas of importance to IPTV providers: infrastructure, video server reference architecture, IT service management, service assurance, content distribution and service provisioning.
In 2002, the two companies established their first competence center dedicated to IPTV technology.
For more information, visit www.hp.com/go/iptv.
