IPTV solutions

Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) represents a significant strategic opportunity for telecommunications service providers. IPTV delivers a variety of rich-media content — including live and stored video, audio, text and Web content originating from TV programmers, movie studios and other sources — to consumers over broadband IP networks.

Combined with voice and data, IPTV offers service providers the ability to provide true Triple Play bundled offerings, enabling potential increases to average revenue per use (ARPU) and customer loyalty. IPTV is a true competitive differentiator, enabling service providers to win back customers and compete with cable and digital satellite providers in providing video services.

Capture new revenue opportunities
Increased penetration of consumer broadband access and advances in video compression technology have made IPTV a reality — available today for you to deploy and begin capturing the large consumer market and potential revenue that belong to these popular services:

• Voice over broadband
• Music
• Gaming
• TV and video over digital subscriber line (DSL) and cable

Deploy IPTV on IBM BladeCenter
A flexible, scalable and reliable infrastructure is critical to a successful IPTV deployment. As service providers expand the number of IPTV subscribers, their network architecture must rapidly and seamlessly adapt to give consumers a flawless television service. IBM BladeCenter® is the platform of choice for the hundreds to thousands of servers deployed for a typical IPTV infrastructure.

• Deployment flexibility. BladeCenter systems can be deployed in either a central office or a datacenter environment, providing maximum deployment location flexibility. All the blade servers and optional switch products of a BladeCenter system are interchangeable between the enterprise and the telecommunications chassis, which is Network Equipment Business Systems (NEBS) Level 3 and European Telecommunication Standards Institute (ETSI) compliant.
• Scalability. As you grow, BladeCenter grows with you. Server expansion is as easy as sliding an additional BladeCenter server into the chassis.
• Processor flexibility. BladeCenter systems offer support for AMD, Intel® and IBM POWER™ processors in blades.

Team with IBM Business Partners
IBM works with a broad ecosystem of independent software vendor (ISV) applications, including a deep collaboration with Microsoft® and Alcatel, offering a solution that integrates Microsoft TV IPTV Edition software with IBM systems. Additional IBM Business Partners include:

• Anevia
• ARRIS
• BitBand
• Casero
• Harmonic
• Kasenna
• NDS
• Orca
• Thomson
• Verimatrix
• Volicon

A strong IPTV portfolio
We deliver a wide range of compute—and input/output (I/O)—intensive platforms to meet the needs of IPTV service providers.