Infovista, unveiled a new portfolio of cloud, SD-WAN, and 5G-focused solutions to give service providers and enterprises total visibility and unprecedented control over their networks and applications. More than 1,500 service providers and businesses in 150 countries rely on Infovista to deliver quality user experience to their end customers.

This month, Radisys introduced its Edge Computing Software Platform. The platform provides an access-agnostic, ETSI standards-compliant Mobile Edge Platform with a building-block framework and open APIs to enable disruptive edge applications. As service providers seek to deploy edge computing in their networks to support multiple 5G, smart enterprise and IoT use applications, Radisys’ platform provides the ability to leverage a common edge computing platform for both wireless and wireline solutions. In other edge news, the ETSI Multi-access Edge Computing ISG released a new whitepaper, entitled MEC in an Enterprise Setting: A Solution Outline.

Innovation News

At Mobile World Congress Americas, the Mobile Authentication Taskforce demonstrated its authentication solution, which is less dependent on passwords to secure user accounts. The Mobile Authentication Taskforce is a collaboration between AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon, the four largest US wireless carriers. Its authentication solution, which was developed collaboratively by the four, combines the carriers’ proprietary, network-based authentication capabilities with other methods to verify a user’s identity. In another MWCA debut, Sprint announced advancements in its line of all-wireless small cells with the introduction of the Sprint Magic Box Generation 3. Available later this year, the latest edition of Sprint’s plug-and-play units will offer speeds up to 25 percent faster than previous models, with a quicker start-up process.

While August brought a bevy of exciting developments on the connected car front, September kept them coming. Autotalks launched the first-ever global V2X solution for connected cars. Its deployment-ready V2X—Vehicle-to-Everything—chipset is the only solution available that supports both DSRC and C-V2X direct communications (PC5 protocol) at the highest security level. 

In AI news, research from Ovum offered a view of the current landscape of AI assistants. Ovum reports that while Amazon’s Alexa is the current market leader, Google Assistant is catching up fast, posing a threat to Alexa’s supremacy. Siri, Cortana, and Bixby offer specific advantages for particular use cases but lag behind Alexa and Google Assistant—with diminishing chances to get ahead, considering the fast-growing functionality and interoperability concerns in the smart home sphere. And MachineMetrics introduced the industry’s first AI-driven remote machine monitoring solution designed for OEMs and equipment providers. This predictive analytics application on MachineMetric’s Industrial IoT platform will allow remote monitoring and management of machine assets in the field and at customer sites—in real time. 

While new solutions and products continue to come to market, a new report released this month highlights a widespread global sales talent shortage that threatens to hamper future innovation. According to a new report from CSO Insights, the research division of Miller Heiman Group, only 16 percent of sales leaders believe that they have the talent they need to succeed in the future. The “2018 Sales Talent Study” is based on a global survey of sales executives, sales enablement leaders, sales operations leaders and sales managers at 321 product- and service-based businesses.

Zenterio announced that Deutsche Telekom (DT), one of Germany's largest telecommunications operators, announced it has launched EntertainTV Sat, a new high-end 4K IPTV, OTT, and satellite set-top box (STB) powered by Zenterio OS. The launch has enabled new client- and cloud-based features and services—among them OTT video-on-demand (YouTube, Netflix, and more), hybrid local/network PVR, HTML5 apps, and other broadcast and streaming innovations. The use of Zenterio OS speeds time-to-market significantly.

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