AT&T will build innovation centers in Palo Alto, California, Plano, Texas, and Ra’anana, near Tel Aviv, Israel to accelerate new networking technologies and applications. Alcatel-Lucent, Amdocs and Ericsson are initial participants. Cisco and Juniper also plan to contribute to the centers. The centers will provide an environment for developers to collaborate with AT&T and its innovators, its host suppliers and other developers.
The centers will provide a semi-autonomous environment for developers to conduct live testing on the AT&T network. The program will also include an online portal that will give developers the tools, support and customer access to help build, test and certify applications across a range of broadband platforms.
Peter Hill, who previously had responsibility for the technology behind AT&T U-verse service, has been tapped to lead AT&T’s innovation center initiative as vice president, ecosystems and innovation.
“The innovation centers will help us enhance collaboration and dramatically accelerate the velocity of innovation, taking ideas from concept to reality in mere months as opposed to years,” said John Donovan, AT&T’s chief technology officer. “We’re tapping into cutting-edge design expertise in Silicon Valley, prototyping industry applications — from automotive to education services — in Plano and the deep skills in communications protocols and innovation that reside in Israel. Working across centers, innovation can follow the sun with a near 24-hour cycle time for agile development.”http://developer.att.com/innovation
