Cisco has announced the renewal of its strategic agreement with Belgian telecommunications and IT services provider Proximus.
Under the terms of a deal, the both companies will collaborate across a number of strategic areas for growth. The focus will be put on next-generation video delivery for consumers, smart city services for government organisations and service orchestration for business-to-business customers.
The benefits will include open cloud architecture on which Proximus will be able to centralise its digital TV functionality as opposed to its consumer’s digital video recorder (DVR), it says. Also, with Cisco Videospace the companies will build together a next generation, cloud based TV offer for Proximus.
For the modern cities, both companies plan to develop a connected cities framework which will offer, on top of the free wireless internet, a business model designed to help monetise coverage and generate more income for businesses.
Cisco will also provide network service orchestration technology so that Proximus’ clients will be able to configure their network services online. It allows to automate and provision the management of both virtual and physical networks.
Thanks to its renewed partnership, Cisco will benefit from Belgian telecom’s technology research and local go-to-market expertise, it says.
“As the leading service provider in Belgium and Luxembourg, Proximus has extensive innovation track record. Proximus sees the benefits of transforming networks to s software-based, agile platform. We are expanding our collaboration to embrace the benefits of the Internet of Everything (IoE) with cloud-based video solutions, virtualised managed services solutions and much more. Together with Proximus, we will co-develop a transformation roadmap towards more agile and cost efficient infrastructure that can sustainably cope with growth in volumes, rightsizing of operational resource and changes in skills and competencies,” says chairman and CEO, Cisco, John Chambers.