BriefingRoom on Connected Planet Online

Paris, March 8, 2011

GDF SUEZ, a French energy group and the world’s second-largest energy company , has signed a six-year deal with Orange Business Services for the management of its information system. The partnership not only includes standard facilities management such as hosting, infrastructure operation and running ERP applications, but also covers setting up a shared engineering team in charge of developing the Group’s solutions to match the needs of its business units as closely as possible.

* a catalog of unified services

Based on the France Telecom-Orange Group facilities management capacity and the increased standardization of technology, the Information System Department at GDF SUEZ will offer the Group’s entities in France a unified catalog of operating services that will help transform the Group and allow it to provide a shared internal services platform.

* tailor-made governance
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Cisco announced that MegaFon, one of Russia’s leading service providers, has installed the Cisco ASR 5000 mobile multimedia core platform in its Central Region mobile network.

With the high performance and advanced intelligence of the Cisco ASR 5000, MegaFon will be able to serve more customers, more reliably, while delivering enhanced mobile services such as data and mobile video.

With the integrated network and subscriber intelligence capabilities of the Cisco ASR 5000, MegaFon, which serves some 56 million subscribers throughout Russia, will be able to develop and deliver advanced mobile services with high levels of customization and personalization. MegaFon customers will also enjoy maximum service reliability thanks to the ASR 5000’s integrated software and hardware redundancy.

The Cisco ASR 5000 was featured in Cisco’s recently announced MOVE (Monetization, Optimization, Videoscape Experience) strategy, designed to help mobile operators like MegaFon monetize their networks through new services and business more

remains market leader in Ethernet services for multinational businesses

Orange Business Services is the leading global provider of Ethernet Services for the second consecutive year, according to Vertical Systems Group’s Full-Year 2010 Global Provider Leaderboard. The Global Provider Leaderboard measures retail Ethernet ports installed at enterprise customer sites outside of a provider’s primary home country.

The development of very high-speed broadband networks is one of the driving forces of France Telecom Orange Group’s corporate project, Conquests 2015. Very high-speed network development is an important factor that will stimulate economic growth and competition in the future.

As businesses of all sizes become increasingly dependent on information to run their operations, the market for Ethernet Services to interconnect business sites and data centers is rising. Since the beginning of the year, more than one-third of the requests for quotation received more

New 100Gbit/s-Optimized Coherent Express Layer Provides Unprecedented Capacity, Reach and Flexibility with End-to-End Service Management

At CeBIT, ADVA Optical Networking, announced the addition of a coherent express layer to its flagship FSP 3000 platform. The new technology has been optimized for 100Gbit/s transmission speed and enables service providers to use optical network resources flexibly and on-demand. Close interworking with the IP/MPLS layer allows a massive increase in network scalability and efficiency. The feature set represents a new generation of agile optical core networks and includes the following three critical elements:

• Optical layer fully optimized for 100Gbit/s coherent transmission technology – Besides the obvious benefit of increasing the capacity per wavelength, the true power of the technology lies in the extra link budget gained with coherent detection. To benefit from the extra link budget, the 100Gbit/s capabilities are complemented by cost-effective, compact and performance-optimized amplification schemes, more

Experience leading global semiconductor businesses to help accelerate growth at the provider of high-performance antenna solutions

Viera, Florida—Feb. 23, 2011—SkyCross, a global developer and manufacturer of advanced antenna and RF solutions that are powering the emergence of 4G networks, today announced the appointment of Bami Bastani, Ph.D., to its Board of Directors. Dr. Bastani is the Chairman and CEO of B2 Global Consulting, LLC, a management consulting firm focused on enabling corporate transformation. His expertise is in leading high-growth, multinational communications businesses.

“SkyCross is privileged to welcome Dr. Bastani, a significantly experienced leader with extensive knowledge of the communications device sector, to the board of directors,” said Ben Naskar, SkyCross Inc., Chairman and CEO. “His familiarity with the customers and international markets that SkyCross serves will be an invaluable asset as SkyCross accelerates the growth of its business.”

From 1998 to 2008, Dr. Bastani was more

Cisco announced a series of customer and technology milestones across the Unified Fabric, Unified Computing System and Unified Network Services technology portfolios which form the foundation of its Data Center Business Advantage architectural framework.

Cisco announced that it has shipped its one millionth Nexus 10Gb Ethernet port, bringing the total number of Nexus ports in customer production environments to more than 7,000,000. The company also surpassed 10,000 NX-OS customers and neared 4,000 Unified Computing Systems customers at the end of its fiscal second quarter — demonstrating the platforms are quickly becoming the infrastructure of choice for next generation data center virtualization and private clouds in enterprise, public sector, commercial and Service Provider markets.

The Nexus and UCS families of products are vital assets in Cisco’s cloud computing portfolio. They provide the building blocks for highly virtualized data center and private cloud environments, and are already widely deployed more

Safaricom, the leading provider of converged communication solutions in Kenya and Tata Communications unveiled the first public Cisco TelePresence Suites in Kenya and Uganda.

Two public Cisco TelePresence rooms are hosted in Serena Hotels’ luxury city hotels in Nairobi and Kampala, both of which are members of the prestigious Leading Hotels of the World organization, and a third will be at Safaricom’s Michael Joseph Center in Nairobi.

Connectivity and management of the TelePresence rooms will be led by Tata Communications, linking Kenya and Uganda to public and private rooms throughout Tata Communications’ network and partner networks. The network spans 32 locations across five continents. This network reach makes TelePresence a truly global collaboration tool.

Safaricom and Cisco collaborated with Copy Cat Ltd to deliver TelePresence solutions for East African customers.

Facilities Now Available in Nairobi and Kampala

This launch marks a new collaboration between more

From Mobile World Congress, the Cisco MOVE was introduced — a strategic framework that comprises new solutions to enable service providers to better manage, enhance and take financial advantage of the rapidly growing volume of mobile video and data traffic.

The new Cisco MOVE (Monetization, Optimization, Videoscape Experience) solutions include Cisco Mobile Videoscape, Cisco Service Provider Wi-Fi and Cisco Adaptive Intelligent Routing (AIR). Cisco MOVE solutions represent the next phase of Cisco’s Service Provider Mobility strategy, which enables service providers to better monetize and optimize their networks, while delivering personalized mobile services across wired and wireless networks.

The new Cisco MOVE solutions span the mobile network –from client to network to cloud — and are designed to address the increasing volume of mobile data traffic — particularly video. According to the recently released Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast for 2010 to 2015, two-thirds more

Ottawa, ON/Marietta, GA - February 14, 2011 - Optelian, a trusted designer and manufacturer of optical transport systems, today announced the signing of a Technology Collaboration Agreement (TCA) between Optelian International Corporation and Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) of India. This comprehensive technology agreement establishes a long-term partnership between the two Companies for the manufacture and design of optical networking systems in India, and deployment throughout the SAARC region. The initial period of the agreement is for 15 years.

The TCA will focus on joint technology development, more

100Gbit/s Metro/Enterprise Solution Shows Error-Free Operation
over Tier-One European Carrier Network

ADVA Optical Networking announces the successful trial of a direct-detection 100Gbit/s solution in the metro network of a tier-one European carrier. The solution ran error-free under real-life conditions with unfavorable fiber characteristics. The trial demonstrated the potential of non-coherent technologies for low-latency applications in metro and enterprise networks.

“ADVA Optical Networking has a long history of providing innovative and pragmatic solutions that deliver top performance, optimized for specific applications,” said Christoph Glingener, chief technology officer at ADVA Optical Networking. “There is a market for 100G solutions outside the traditional long-haul space,” he continued. “In the metro and data center connectivity domain, users need low latency, a small footprint, low power consumption and aggressive price points. This trial was excellent proof that we can deliver against these requirements.”

The demonstration was part more