The Innovation Days 2010

 

The Innovation Days 2010: Interesting Talks and presentation of Vodafone Application Award

Once again, this year's Innovation Days were held in November in Vodafone's Test & Innovation Center in Düsseldorf. From November 9 to 11, we again welcomed numerous visitors from our line of business - customers, project partners, representatives from the international Vodafone Group and journalists. The focal theme was the most recent fields of innovation "Machine-to-Machine Communications" (M2M) and the launch of LTE (Long Term Evolution).

Very interesting talks held by high-ranking guests provided exciting insights into background information about the most interesting topics that are currently discussed within the sector.

At the accompanying exhibition, both Vodafone itself and our partners had the opportunity to present their innovative solutions to the trade visitors.

We would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank our partners who contributed towards making this event possible: ZTE, HTC, Orga Systems, Ericsson, Nokia-Siemens Networks, Huawei, Cetecom, Dimension Data, Giesecke & Devrient, Computacenter, Arkadon, accenture and EBF.

On all three mornings, trade visitors were able to attend different talks given by sector insiders.

On "Journalists Day" on November 9:

  • Olaf Acker from Booz & Company provided information on the future of telecommunications
  • Prof. Dr. Dr. Holger Boche from the Technical University in Munich gave an insight into future encoding procedures
  • Dr. David Huo, Senior Director of the Global Standardization Group of ZTE Deutschland about zMile, ZTEs Multimedia Integrated Life Experience, which enables data services via an IMS Core Net.

On "Key Account Day" on November 10:

  • Matthias Horx from the future-research institute Horx presented the concept of "Technolution"
  • Olaf Acker from Booz & Company on the future of telecommunications
  • Dr. Christian Wirtz, Director of Strategy at Vodafone Germany, presented Vodafone's future telecommunications strategy.

On the third day, November 11, which was assigned to the international Vodafone Group:

  • Evan Kirchheimer from OVUM presented "The Changing Face of Multimedia Communication"
  • Walter Kok, Director of Customer Services & Service Operations at Vodafone Global Enterprise, gave a talk on "Moving Forward with our Commitment",
  • Juan-Jose Juan, Head of Innovation at Vodafone Global Enterprise, spoke about "Global Enterprise Innovation"
  • Reinhard Kreft, Head of Standardization & Industry Engagement at Vodafone Group Research & Development, presented the theme of "Evolution and Next Generation Wireless Services".

An important point on the programme was the presentation of the Vodafone Application Award, which Vodafone awards to developers of mobile applications in the categories M2M, best sector solution and greatest innovation.



This year's winners were voted for by the readers of the renowned trade magazine 'connect'. The winners in the awarded categories now have the opportunity of displaying their product in the showroom of our Test & Innovation Center.

(In the picture you can see the price-winners: Roland Wienen (IC-SYS), Thomas Breidt (Movilitas) and Christian Schad (Schad GmbH).)

The winner in the category "M2M" is "Extend 7000" from Schad GmbH in Hamburg. This solution enables the remote control and monitoring of industrial plants via a BlackBerry Smartphone.

Other nominees in the M2M category were the GSM-based "Electronic Lift Attendant" from Bosch Communication Center Magdeburg GmbH and the GPS/GPRS-based "Locating and Operating Hours Module in the CEE Plug for Auxiliary Equipment" from the Berlin-based provider ENAiKOON.

In the category "Best Sector Solution", "ProfSys Mobile Client for BlackBerry" from IC-SYS Informationssysteme GmbH in Gera ranked first. This is a BlackBerry Client for mobile care services.

The electronic recording procedure for waste recovery and disposal "MOPAD eANVE" from Tonfunk GmbH in Falkenstein was also nominated as the best sector solution. Together with GSM, GPS, RFID and biometric identification, this procedure fulfills all the regulations applying to the electronic verification of waste transportation and disposal, which will be obligatory by law as of February 2011. Another nominee was the server and telecommunications-based video monitoring system, "Network-Video-Security-Recording" from Moditech in Chemnitz.

Finally, in the category "Greatest Innovation", the company Movilitas Consulting AG from Mannheim won the day with its "Movilizer.com" - a mobile app store which facilitates the distribution of Smartphone applications within companies.

Further great innovations that were nominated were the "Mobile recording of the results of dental check-ups by school dentists using a BlackBerry solution" from GFI Informationsdesign in Duisburg and "mdexweb.direct 2.0" from the software house mdex GmbH in Tangstaedt, which had realized a micro Web-server as an embedded application on Vodafone SIM cards that is used particularly when implementing M2M applications.

All the applications presented here were certified by the experts attending as having excellent market prospects.



Many other solutions from partner companies were also presented at the exhibition accompanying the Innovation Days 2010. Representing the wide range of applications, systems and hardware products, the "Dynamic Energy Bill" from Orga Systems GmbH in Paderborn should be mentioned here. This is a smart-metering solution that enables energy service providers to offer their customers flexibly configured, market and load-dependent energy prices. With the example of a model house, the trade visitors were able to try out the new mobile app "E.Cockpit", which showed them changes regarding the volume of power consumption and costs over the course of the day.

During the development phase of many of the solutions demonstrated, the respective firms were actively supported by Vodafone's Test & Innovation Center, particularly with regard to carrying out field tests in real network environments. The certification process now offered by the Test & Innovation Center for M2M modules and applications is just one example of what kind of support can be provided.

Are you interested in receiving further information? Then, just send an e-mail to vodafone-testcenter@vodafone.com.

Following the successful conclusion of this year's 6th Innovation Days, we are now already looking ahead to the 7th event which is planned to take place in autumn 2011. As soon as detailed information and dates have been determined for this, we will, of course, inform you via this newsletter and on the Vodafone Test & Innovation Center's website (http://www.vodafone.de/testing/innovation-days.html).