Sun Microsystems India and Tech Mahindra today announced a strategic alliance to enable the rollout of cost-effective and efficient IPTV services to the Indian and Asia Pacific markets. As part of this alliance, Sun and Tech Mahindra along with AMD will jointly set up a next generation IPTV lab at the Tech Mahindra facility in Pune. Tech Mahindra is already engaged with various service providers to offer IPTV solutions in various geographies.

Sun recently introduced the Sun Streaming System -- the industry's first massively scalable and cost-effective video delivery platform for cable and telecommunications operators, which helps operators increase subscriber revenue by offering new video-based services and personalized, unique video streams to each consumer.

The IPTV lab at Tech Mahindra would feature solutions from an exclusive consortium of solution partners including, Digisoft, Envivio, Harmonic, I-Make, Verimatrix and Mototech, and Sun's own Streaming System. The State-of-the-art lab will showcase a pre-integrated End-to-end IPTV system for Tier1, tier2 and Tier3 service providers. Tech Mahindra would use this lab to showcase its IPTV domain expertise toits global customers. This lab will also allow potential customers, OEMs and ISVs to test the Sun Streaming System's capabilities, architect and validate an end-to-end solution.

Speaking at thelaunch, Mr. K.P Unnikrishnan, Director, Strategic Alliances Sun Microsystems India said, “Through this alliance with Tech Mahindra, we are looking forward to showcasing an end-to-end IPTV solution based on carrier grade Sun systems featuring the revolutionary Sun Streaming System. This is Sun’s first such alliance in the country for IPTV services. We are extremely excited about this partnership and what it entails for us."

“Tech Mahindra through its sustained investments in R&D, has developed IPTV capabilities across several areas that include consulting services, system integration capabilities, network technology areas in next generation elements, network and application performance optimization, interactive application development and BSS/OSS systems. Tech Mahindra is playing a significant role with a number of incumbent and emerging service providers and enterprises in the IPTV domain and Triple Play. Tech Mahindra has partnered with the industry best product vendors, like Sun, to offer an end-to-end IPTV system to service providers globally. “, said Mr. Shankar Allimatti, Vice President, Next Generation Technologies, Tech Mahindra.

“To leverage the potential that India offers for IPTV, we are partnering with the industry’s best to provide the most cost effective, best-performing IPTV solutions to ourcustomers and thus further our IPTV strategy for this region. Tech Mahindra was a natural choice given their expertise and experience in telecom solutions and services as well as their intimate knowledge of the Indian market. This alliance will help bring the Sun Streaming System's market-changing economics to customers in the video services industry in India.” Mr Unnikrishnan further added.