Tel Aviv, Israel – July 2, 2013
Nokia Siemens Networks announces Israel Innovation Competition winners
Winning Israeli companies rewarded for their high-tech innovations
On April 9, 2013, Nokia Siemens Networks launched its Israel Innovation Competition with the aim of identifying high-tech innovations to complement the company’s ground-breaking Liquid Applications* solution. From 25 companies that proposed their ideas, Nokia Siemens Networks chose six finalists. Today, the winners of Global Innovation Award and Promising Startup Award are announced.
Nokia Siemens Networks’ engagement with entrepreneurs, developers and application providers to create new applications using capabilities of the Liquid Applications platform is yet another example of how the world mobile broadband specialist is encouraging an open environment for innovation. This is closely intertwined with the goals of the company’s Technology Vision 2020 for the fundamental transformation of mobile networks to enable a personalized mobile broadband experience for end-users.
“I am delighted by the quality of submissions to our open innovation competition in Israel. My personal thanks to all the participants and congratulations to the winners for making this engagement truly rewarding for us all. Innovation is not a one-way street, and that’s’ why we want to work with various ecosystem companies through open platforms such as this competition,” said Hossein Moiin, executive vice president, technology and innovation at Nokia Siemens Networks. “Our goal is to create an underlying network fabric that allows others to innovate, thus speeding up mobile broadband adoption and ultimately realize our vision of enabling networks to deliver 1GB per user per day of personalized data profitably by 2020.”
The competition entries were assessed by experts from Nokia Siemens Networks, together with representatives of external parties** including Intel Capital, Cellcom Israel Ltd, Israel Export and International Cooperation Institute, as well as Mr. Amos Talmor, an experienced high-tech investor. On June 27, Nokia Siemens Networks hosted the Israel Innovation Event, where the six finalists had an opportunity to present their applications to the assessment team and the press. The assessment team then announced the winners.
Winner of the Global Innovation Award: Racana
Racana developed a platform for personalization of content and content recommendations for mobile users. With this solution, mobile operators can anonymously identify the interest areas of consumers and enable the offering of personalized digital content, services and products and monetize this value add, which is one of the many benefits that will be enabled by Liquid Applications.
“We were honored to take part in the Israel Innovation Competition. In the eyes of a young start-up like our company, we found Nokia Siemens Networks’ open innovation approach and thinking refreshing and unique”, said Amit Sternberg, chief executive officer at Racana. “Nokia Siemens Networks ‘s professional team encouraged us to take into account wider aspects related to our business, as reflected from the mobile operator’s point of view.”
Racana was founded by group of musicians, and still today, its management and most of the employees play at least one kind of a musical instrument. “We believe that in any aspect of life just like in music, hard work, devotion, creative thinking and team work will bring the best results”, concluded Sternberg.
As the Winner of the Global Innovation Award, Racana will engage in detailed business evaluation and solution testing with Nokia Siemens Networks, following this evaluation Racana may have an opportunity to become an important part of the global mobile broadband ecosystem through Nokia Siemens Networks.
Winner of the Promising Startup Award: C-B4
C-B4 is a highly sophisticated predictive analytics software system that autonomously models and analyzes any kind of “objects”, such as a user, a sensor or a network component. It is used for detecting hidden patterns in large sets of data and mapping them into business opportunities. The solution can be used to profile network demand and predict network problems before they even happen. It enables a higher quality of service with a better understanding of customer needs – leading to new revenue opportunities.
“It was a great opportunity for us to work with a large company such as Nokia Siemens Networks and showcase the benefits of C-B4. The beauty of our solution is that as the analyzed system becomes more sophisticated, contains more data and involves increasingly complex customer needs, the added value of C-B4 becomes more significant”, said Professor Irad Ben‐Gal, chief executive officer at C-B4. “The experience we have gained with developing and demonstrating this innovative solution has given us a great advantage going forward”.
C-B4 is the product of a Tel Aviv University technology-transfer project. It has a strong engineering team and its CEO, Professor Ben-Gal, is an internationally recognized expert in the field of statistical process control. The co-founder Dr. Gonen Singer is a leading expert in data mining.
C-B4 will receive the option to enter into a four-month mentoring experience with Mr. Amos Talmor, a private investor & startup consultant and part of the assessment team, with the aim to help the company develop and execute its Go to Market plan. In addition, Nokia Siemens Networks will continue its dialogue with C-B4.
Four other companies reached the finals of the competition
- NICE Optimize with its powerful geographical location engine, which provides a very detailed 3-dimensional view of the radio conditions even inside buildings, for better network monitoring, optimization and planning. Mobile users will enjoy improved indoor radio coverage and better service from the mobile operator.
- SentryCom with its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution that enables confidential and certified file transfers and online transactions protecting users from security problems .
- Uppspace with its monitoring and crash prevention system for cloud computing environments. It is a real-time monitoring solution that analyzes the traffic and prevents the software from crashing and can be deployed in mobile networks.
- Velocee with its concept to reduce traffic in the mobile network. It reduces the need to use expensive data connections by directing the consumption of data in low cost areas which also has an impact on the experience of the mobile user.
For more information on the competition, selection process and awards, go to the Israel Innovation Competition web page. To share your thoughts on the topic, join the discussion with @NokiaSiemensNet on Twitter using #MBBFuture, #TechVision2020 and #innovation.
About Nokia Siemens Networks
Nokia Siemens Networks is the world’s specialist in mobile broadband. From the first ever call on GSM, to the first call on LTE, we operate at the forefront of each generation of mobile technology. Our global experts invent the new capabilities our customers need in their networks. We provide the world’s most efficient mobile networks, the intelligence to maximize the value of those networks, and the services to make it all work seamlessly.
With headquarters in Espoo, Finland, we operate in over 120 countries and had net sales of approximately 13.4 billion euros in 2012. http://www.nokiasiemensnetworks.com
Notes
* Nokia Siemens Networks’ Liquid Applications fundamentally changes the role of base stations in the mobile network by turning them into local hubs of service creation and delivery. Processing and storage capabilities are provided with integrated IT cloud servers, together with the ability to collect real-time network data such as radio conditions, subscriber location, direction of travel and more. Data like this can be exploited by applications in order to offer context-relevant services that transform the mobile broadband experience.
** The external parties involved with assessing the competition submissions were:
- Intel Capital – For more information: http://www.intelcapital.com, and @Intelcapital on Twitter
- Cellcom Israel Ltd – For more information: http://www.cellcom.co.il
- The Israel Export and International Cooperation Institute (IEICI) – For more information: http://www.export.gov.il/eng/HomePage/
- Mr. Amos Talmor, investor and enterpreneur – For more information: http://www.amostalmor.com, and Amos Talmor on LinkedIn
