NEI, a provider of application platforms, appliances and lifecycle support services for software developers, OEMs service providers worldwide has joined the GE Intelligent Platforms (News - Alert) program to deliver the best telecommunication and ATCA platform to its customers.

GE Intelligent Platforms, a "premier integration program," allows customers to acquire complete, integrated systems while reducing development expense and minimizing time-to-market.

This initiative will help the customers to rapidly design, build and bring to market more complete, qualified and scalable systems with greater competitive advantages. The organizations serving the commercial carrier-grade telecommunications market are increasingly seeking more modular, multi-vendor, COTS-based designs that can be easily updated as technology evolves. The integration control of such systems is difficult, time-consuming and often cost prohibitive to service providers themselves.

The GE Intelligent Platforms Premier Integration Program helps reduce research and development expenses and accelerates deployments by bringing together companies who offer the specific skills and experience needed to deliver highly integrated systems.

Rubin Dhillon, communications product manager, GE Intelligent Platforms said that their customers need a high-mix design and integration center that can deliver proven integration services and create application-ready business solutions.

Further, Dhillon added that there is a growing discomfort with some ODMs and integrators that offer proprietary platforms as a means to achieve vendor lock-in and the Premier Integration Program aims to deliver next-generation open platforms and encourage innovation in this rapidly evolving market.

"NEI is very pleased to be one of the first companies to join this program," said Jeff Hudgins, vice president of marketing at NEI. "Our frame-level design, integration and lifecycle support services are key components of a successful deployment. Having expertise in these areas, NEI is ideally positioned to offer a great value to GE customers."