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Press Release -- July 10th, 2014
Source: Nokia Siemens Networks
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Nokia Networks Announces Silicon Valley Open Innovation Challenge Winners

Making disruptive advancements in mobile networks, winners will collaborate with industry experts and Nokia stakeholders

July 9, 2014

Mountain View, Calif. – On April 10, Nokia Networks launched its Silicon Valley Open Innovation Challenge, offering the brightest innovators an opportunity to collaborate with the company on game-changing ideas to help shape the future of the telecommunications industry. After receiving 90 submissions, Nokia Networks chose seven finalists for one-on-one coaching in preparation for the event finale, where two grand prize winners were named.

The challenge, which was also supported by Nokia Growth Partners, Nokia Technologies and the Telecom Council of Silicon Valley, invited participants to submit innovation solutions for big data analytics and telco cloud, two of the most disruptive areas for mobile networks. Finalists participated in technical workshops with experts and decision makers from Nokia Networks and its Technology & Innovation organization. The grand prize winners won a trip to Nokia’s headquarters to meet with company leadership as part of its commitment to explore joint solutions. In addition, each finalist was assigned a Nokia ‘Innovation Champion’ to guide their innovation journey within the company over the next few months. Nokia Growth Partners also invited the seven finalists for a next round of engagements.

“Great innovation takes openness, collaboration and multi-disciplinary experts working together on big ideas to solve big challenges,” said Hossein Moiin, executive vice president and CTO for Nokia Networks. “That’s why we take great pride in contributing to and collaborating with the Silicon Valley innovation community. Our approach is to create a platform, orchestrate the ecosystem and build partnerships to co-create, accelerate and perhaps even disrupt the wireless industry. We are very pleased with the caliber of submissions we received. Congratulations to all the finalists – they all are winners and we welcome them to a journey with Nokia that begins now.”

Grand prize winner: Midokura (www.midokura.com), for ‘MidoNet’, a complete overlay networking virtualization solution that redefines SDN for telco clouds. MidoNet provides a software-based virtual networking layer within an existing physical network infrastructure, making the once costly and burdensome physical network into a flexible platform with massive scalability.

“Nokia Networks has a rich tradition of innovation and a deep understanding of the needs of network operators. We look forward to collaborating with the company to open a new chapter in the creation of a next generation of telco cloud,” said Dan Dumitriu, CEO of Midokura.

Grand prize winner: ParStream (www.parstream.com), for its disruptive database technology that processes extreme volume and velocity of big data faster than the speed of light. ParStream provides immediate insights from massive, continuously growing amounts of data, based on unique, patented algorithms, and enables new types of applications in ecommerce, telco, finance, retail and many other industries.

“Nokia Networks is leading the way in identifying cutting-edge innovation to disrupt their industry and obtain a competitive advantage. We look forward to working with the company and their customers on groundbreaking solutions that analyze the massive and rapidly growing amounts of data being generated from wireless networks,” said Peter Jensen, CEO of ParStream.

A special prize for the ‘Most Promising Startup’ was awarded to StreetLight Data (www.streetlightdata.com), a company which uses anonymized telco archival data to figure out how people move and then pinpoint where businesses should follow them. StreetLight Data helps retailers and urban city planners make the right location decisions by providing metrics for any address in the US, and describing the group of people who work, live, shop, walk, drive, or generally spend time near that address.

Four other companies reached the finals of the competition:

Jolata (www.jolata.com) for its virtually zero footprint software probe, Observation Point (OP), which installs anywhere in, at or alongside a network element to measure and report end-to-end network latency – hop-by-hop, and on up to every packet and flow. The Jolata solution visualizes unprecedented network detail, in real-time, with microsecond accuracy and at millisecond intervals. It also provides a recommendation engine for predictive and prescriptive network operations.

NetRounds (www.netrounds.com) for transforming the testing and measurement industry by offering a downloadable network appliance tailored for service assurance and end-user experience measurements. Globally available through the public cloud as a SaaS subscription, NetRounds effectively transforms bare metal x86 hardware or virtual machines into professional test and measurement devices. These can start remote troubleshooting within minutes, reducing time and cost to solve complicated customer issues by up to 90 percent.

Danateq (www.danateq.com) for LINK, its real-time, self-learning “congnitive” analytics platform. LINK has the vision of enabling enterprises to implement continuously improving automated business processes through cognitive loops. In the telecom industry, Danateq is enabling operators to create 360° customer views as the first step to a cognitive enterprise.

NetNumber (www.netnumber.com) for TITAN, the industry’s only common infrastructure for the virtual delivery of real-time signaling control, policy enforcement and subscriber database services. This represents a paradigm shift for building a radically simplified core network where all signaling control services are provided on a common TITAN infrastructure. This makes signaling a non-issue and reduces signaling complexity and traffic by 50 percent.

The Open Innovation Challenge entries were reviewed and voted on by a jury of 70 judges, comprised of members from Nokia Growth Partners, Nokia experts, consultants and customers, and external innovation experts. The top 20 entrants and five wildcards were then invited to deliver an “elevator pitch” to selected jurors. Apart from the seven finalists, 11 demo spot winners were selected to join the finale event held to showcase their innovation to the 125 telecom leaders representing Nokia management, venture capitalists, operators, CEOs of telecom startups, innovation experts and consultants.

Additional info on the finalists and winners can be found at http://nsn.com/OpenInnovationChallenge.

To share your thoughts on the topic, join the discussion with @NSNtweets on Twitter using #NSNchallenge and #innovation.

About Nokia

Nokia invests in technologies important in a world where billions of devices are connected. We are focused on three businesses: network infrastructure software, hardware and services, which we offer through Networks; location intelligence, which we provide through HERE; and advanced technology development and licensing, which we pursue through Technologies. Each of these businesses is a leader in its respective field.

Nokia Networks is the world’s specialist in mobile broadband. From the first ever call on GSM, to the first call on LTE, we operate at the forefront of each generation of mobile technology. Our global experts invent the new capabilities our customers need in their networks. We provide the world’s most efficient mobile networks, the intelligence to maximize the value of those networks, and the services to make it all work seamlessly. www.nsn.com // http://company.nokia.com

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