IBM and Sunbay today announced the signing of a strategic cooperation and partnership agreement. The subject of this agreement is the marketing of a groundbreaking appliance for telecom network operators made up of Sunbay’s Netsnapper™ Suite, the leading solution for network optimization and mobile device management, and IBM’s POWER7 SYSTEM™ server hardware, WebSphere Application Server and IBM DB2.
This new appliance will be offered to telecom network operators worldwide, out of IBM data centers located around the globe. The appliance will be marketed by both Sunbay and IBM as SAHAS (Software and Hardware as a Service) primarily for bandwidth optimization of mobile data networks. Alternatively, the network operator can chose to install a pre-configured version of the appliance in its network environment, and to manage it independently or in cooperation with IBM/Preferred System Integrator.
The new appliance will be made available in August/September 2010.
The value proposition resides in optimization of mobile network bandwidth through compression, and through seamless offloading to cheaper networks with ample bandwidth (such as WLAN). The savings for an operator of mobile data networks are expected to be around 7% of EBITDA. End users benefit from seamless high quality access to mobile data services.
The partners expect to jointly establish this service as the global standard for mobile broadband optimization and mobile device management.