Orca Interactive, a global market leader in developing middleware and applications for IPTV, announced today the launch of its Interactive Alliance to promote cooperation among IPTV industry leaders and provide comprehensive future-proof solutions.

In the emerging IPTV market, it is critical for players across the IPTV value chain to provide open solutions. To stay ahead of the innovation curve, operators require open solutions with proven interoperability. Given the difficulty of predicting the next "killer app," operators must offer a "long tail" of numerous, attractive services that create value for subscribers -- yet at a low cost to operators. As a result, vendors must supply open IPTV solutions that can accommodate the rapid, cost-effective introduction of evolving technologies, capabilities and applications.

The Interactive Alliance partners provide value to IPTV operators by reducing time to market and total cost of ownership with a pre-integrated and reliable full IPTV solution. The Interactive Alliance includes several tracks:

• Integration partners
• Technology partners
• Application developer partners
• SUI (Subscriber User Interface) partners

Orca provides its Interactive Alliance partners with implementation tools, including the SUI SDK for TV interfaces and application development, an IPTV SDP (Service Delivery Platform) for rapid integration into the operator's network, plug-ins and APIs for effective integration across the IPTV value chain, as well as training and documentation.

Partners can leverage the success of Orca's RiGHTv open solution, reduce time and effort of integrating new IPTV capabilities into existing solutions, create a win-win situation for all parties via a flexible, committed partnership, and build revenues by undertaking joint marketing and sales efforts with Orca.

"The Interactive Alliance is filling a critical need in the IPTV value chain by bringing together all the major players to provide interoperable, open solutions," said Reuven Elmalem, EMEA IPTV Solution Business development, Nortel. "Specifically, Orca's SI-enabled approach is what draws us to membership in the Interactive Alliance. It translates into streamlined IPTV system integration so we can easily install, customize and maintain RiGHTv, as well as upgrade it over time to meet evolving operator needs."

"Using RiGHTv's built-in plug-ins and APIs with BitBand's Network Abstraction, Orca and BitBand achieved rapid and successful interoperability between the BitBand VDN (Video Delivery Network) and RiGHTv," said Yuval Sovinsky, EVP Marketing & Sales, BitBand Technologies.

"Leveraging the flexibility of Orca's SUI SDK, we quickly developed and delivered an advanced subscriber UI for our IPTV service provider customers," said Danny Peled, CEO, GooMe. "We have also been able to develop applications and sell them to Orca IPTV middleware customers."

"The challenge of delivering an optimal user experience is a crucial test for any IPTV service," said Simon Woodward, CEO, ANT plc. "By bringing Orca's SUI SDK together with our ANT Galio Client platform and next-generation Galio browser, service providers gain control over the entire look and feel of the user interface and content presentation, enabling branded and consistent service differentiation."

"The IPTV world is still emerging and changing quickly that operators often begin working with one technology and application suite and change it as their solution evolve," said Eyal Adanya, director of business development, Orca Interactive. "Due to the participation in the Interactive Alliance operators know they have a tested open solution to fit their current as well as future needs."

Interested IPTV solution providers may contact bizdev@orcainteractive.com for additional information about the Interactive Alliance.