Kontron and Astute Networks announce strategic technology partnership

Companies to integrate their respective ATCA board-level products to provide integrated edge compute/storage platforms for IPTV, IMS and HSS applications

Eching, Germany/Barcelona, Spain, February 11, 2008 − Kontron, a leading global provider of embedded and open modular solutions for the communications market, and Astute Networks, a leader in the development of high performance networked storage solutions for mission-critical applications, announced today a technology partnership for the purpose of developing leading-edge platform solutions intended for support of HLR/ HSS, IPTV and IMS network applications.

Kontron and Astute Networks will conduct interoperability and performance testing between the Kontron AT8030, a 10GbE multi-core AdvancedTCA processor board featuring three Intel® Core™ Duo processors, and the Astute Networks Caspian AdvancedTCA 10Gb iSCSI high-capacity storage board. Together, these two pre-validated and pre-tested boards will enable telecom equipment manufacturers to design and rapidly offer their carrier, service provider and multi-system operator (MSO) clients an economical method to deploy next-generation multi-media networks, while having a non-disruptive path to scale the size and performance of these systems over time. The partnership between Kontron and Astute Networks will also include suitability testing for applications requiring high-performance edge compute/storage solutions, as well as joint sales and marketing activities to support these products.

“The multitude of opportunities to design next generation systems on AdvancedTCA platforms are occurring at an accelerated rate,” said Robert Courteau, General Manager, Kontron Canada. “Our respective boards represent tremendous prospects for TEMs, NEPs and ISVs to design numerous network elements – such as content streaming applications and HLR/HSS systems – that depend on significant multi-core processing power, a 10GbE data plane, and RAID5 extreme storage capacity requirements.”

“Astute Networks is very excited to partner with Kontron on solutions for these markets,” said Mike Heumann, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Astute Networks. “Innovative solutions will be required to address emerging markets such as IPTV and IMS in a manner that provides a high level of service, and still meets the business needs of carriers and MSOs. The complementary strengths of the Astute Networks storage products and Kontron’s processor and integrated platform products enable robust ATCA-based architectures that address these needs.”

In order to rapidly capitalize on this market, carriers and MSOs will need to be able to deploy cutting-edge digital computing and storage architectures that span from the core network to the access and enterprise network. At the same time, these architectures must be scalable with the potential to grow subscribers or content. A key part of these architectures is Carrier Grade computing and storage in the Central Office (CO), Mobile Switching Center (MSC), and Access Network. The usage of ATCA as carrier grade platform and specifically the combination of the AT8030 multi-core, multi-processor CPU blade and the high capacity ATCA storage blade allows Carriers and Telecom equipment vendors to grow their network for content delivery and subscriber management without changing the HW platform.

The combination of Kontron’s leading-edge ATCA 10GbE multi-core processor board with the density and performance of Astute’s Caspian ATCA storage blade provides a winning combination for a variety of media applications. The primary challenge in the deployment of new services is the ability to scale the architecture as demand grows. The open modular architecture inherent in both of these products, plus the ability to virtualize storage across multiple Caspian boards, makes the job of scaling these systems within the reach of normal telecom deployment and maintenance practices. The end result is reduced TCO for carriers and MSOs that utilize this architecture.