By: Jesse Cryderman

The 2013 COMET Innovation Awards

Nominations are still open for Pipeline’s 2013 COMET Innovation Awards program, which provides the highest level of objective endorsement for innovation and thought leadership in the communications and entertainment technology (COMET) industry. The competition is heating up with nominations from the industry’s leading innovators, and this year there are more chances to win — both service providers and vendors can compete in all categories. After last year’s incredible event in Dublin, Ireland, the historic Les Salons de la Rotonde Lenôtre in Nice, France, will play host to an exclusive awards ceremony you won’t want to miss. Opportunities to compete, sponsor the event and/or attend the awards reception are still available; for more information, surf on over to our information page, see the latest press release or email comet@pipelinepub.com.

Oracle continues its buying spree

Just weeks after scooping up Acme Packet, Oracle announced that it will purchase policy and diameter-signaling specialists Tekelec. Infonetics Research pegs the potential of the policy management market at $2.7 billion by 2017. The spending spree is tipping Oracle’s hand, and it looks like the house that Larry built is intent on pushing further into the telecommunications space.

Dana Cooperson, principal analyst at Ovum, casts this development as illustrative of the race between IT-focused and telecom-focused vendors. “Both are trying to help [their CSP, or communications service provider] customers better manage and monetize their networks and the data they generate.”

She adds, “This acquisition further extends Oracle’s move into the heart of telecom networks. Tekelec will extend Oracle Communications’s network-control capabilities, which it also bolstered with its February announcement to acquire Acme Packet. Tekelec also focuses on extending its service-control solutions, adding policy control and subscriber data management to its list of capabilities. Oracle has in the past partnered to provide these capabilities, but by bringing them in-house it will have more opportunity to shape the road map and combine the capabilities in a more tightly coupled solution.”

Now that Oracle has boosted its advanced network visibility and management expertise, what — or who — is next? Stay tuned to the Pipeline news center, because there are almost certainly more acquisitions to come.

Monetizing March Madness

If you live in the United States you probably already know what March Madness is. But if you don’t, it’s essentially the postseason playoffs for NCAA college basketball teams, with the “madness” stemming from intense media coverage and a nonstop fever pitch among fans and alumni, who root for their favorites and compete against each other to determine who can “call the brackets,” i.e., accurately predict the outcome of numerous games. The prospect of small schools edging out larger, established rivals further heightens interest.