Telecom Italia Sparkle wins Best Service Innovation-EMEA and Best Enterprise Application - Media at 2015 MEF Excellence Awards

The Awards recognize Sparkle’s services, application, technology, professional excellence and innovation in the global Carrier Ethernet and emerging Third Network community

Telecom Italia Sparkle wins two awards at the MEF Excellence Awards’ ceremony, held in Dallas on November 17th as part of the GEN15 event. The 2015 judging panel - composed of prominent senior analysts from Current Analysis, Frost & Sullivan, IDC, IHS Infonetics, Metanoia, Ovum, SDxCentral and Vertical Systems among others - has selected TI Sparkle as winner of the Best Service Innovation – EMEA and Best Enterprise Application – Media Awards.

The first award recognizes the most innovative MEF certified Carrier Ethernet / Third Network connectivity service available in the EMEA region - TI Sparkle's Cloud Players Connect - that allows customers to reach main Cloud Players in Europe, US and Asia thus significantly enhancing TI Sparkle’s proposition to Enterprises, Medium or Regional Operators, Resellers, System Integrators and IT Consultants.

The Best Enterprise Application -Media Award recognizes the most innovative use of Carrier Ethernet services for media applications which TI Sparkle won - in collaboration with its partner Persidera - with its Broadcasters Solutions proposition. The service caters to the needs of TV channels and broadcasters for the delivery of video signals ensuring global coverage and top performance.

Both these Awards follow the recognition as “Best CE 2.0 Wholesale E-Access Provider EMEA of the year” and the “Carrier Ethernet CE 2.0” Certification, obtained in 2014 by Telecom Italia Sparkle and Telecom Italia Group - the first Service Providers in Europe to achieve this Certification.

Moreover, TI Sparkle is the only European company to be part of MEF Board of Directors with its Chairman and CEO Alessandro Talotta, who said that “these awards represent an additional acknowledgment for TI Sparkle as driving force in the radical IT and Network transformation process the industry is facing with the introduction of Lifecycle Service Orchestration capabilities".

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About the MEF
The MEF is the driving force behind the ~$80 billion global market for Carrier Ethernet services and technologies and the defining body for LSO (Lifecycle Service Orchestration) standards that underpin emerging Third Network services with CE 2.0, SDN, and NFV. An industry alliance consisting of nearly 220 member organizations based in 43 countries, the MEF operates through a powerful collaborative framework of service providers, network solutions suppliers, and other stakeholders to achieve CE 2.0 and LSO development and globalization objectives.

MEF’s flagship work is CE 2.0, including specifications, operational frameworks, and certification programs for services, equipment, and professionals. Visit www.mef.net for more details on these programs.

Building on fourteen years of success with Carrier Ethernet, the MEF is now focused on development of LSO with APIs to enable paradigm-shifting agile, assured, and orchestrated services over more efficient, automated networks. The MEF’s vision for the transformation of network connectivity services and the networks used to deliver them is referred to as the “Third Network,” which combines the on-demand agility and ubiquity of the Internet with the performance and security assurances of CE 2.0. For information on the Third Network and LSO download the MEF’s Third Network Vision & Strategy White Paper and Third Network Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO) Vision White Paper.