A day of mixed fortunes #WVA2012

It was a day of mixed fortunes for Alcatel-Lucent as shares fell sharply on reports of a wider operating loss but there was brighter news in the evening as UK & Ireland CEO, Lucy Dimes, lifted two trophies at the prestigous World Vendor Awards.

First up came Best Content Solution for their Digital Media Store, to be followed up by one of the highlights of the evening, CEO of the Year for Ben Verwaayen. Ben unfortunately couldn't make it to the dinner (something to do with first quarter results - see above!) but did send an acceptance video which you can watch. You can also read an interview with Ben Verwaayen conducted by ETNODigital on Total Telecom.

Joining Alcatel-Lucent at the World vendor Awards were a raft of other excited winners, including both the biggest in the industry (ZTE, Ericsson, Syniverse etc) and some less well known names such as fonYou, ADTRAN, and Momac. You can discover all the winners by downloading the Magazine of the Night.

Finally, speaking of awards, don't forget that entries are now open for the 2012 World Communication Awards, including the new category of Best Place to Work

Who will be the winner? #WVA2012

60 companies will gather for tomorrows World Vendor Awards at Jumeirah Carlton Tower. Good luck to everyone on the shortlist!

If you are Tweeting from the event or about the event, use #WVA2012

Thanks for our sponsors: Ipanema Technologies and ZTE.

Who has the best vendor #brand in #telecoms?

In the February issue of Total Telecom+ we worked with Brand Finance to reveal the most valuable brands in telecoms. Predominantly we were focusing on the telecom operators (the full Telecom 500 is coming soon) but amongst the extra data included was the Top 5 hardware vendor brands.

This research is pretty clear cut, these are the most valuable brands, but are they the best? To get this answer, we need to include other more qualitative factors, reflecting how the industry thinks and feels about brands, and this is the role of Best Brand category at the World Vendor Awards #WVA2012, where the winner is determined by the votes of the industry.

In 2011 Ericsson were triumphant at the awards, beating off stiff competition from the likes of Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Juniper Networks (winner of the Best Brand Campaign category in 2010), and ZTE, and reflecting that you don't need to have the most valuable brand to be the industries Best Brand.

Since then, Ericsson have climbed the rankings from number three to number two most valuable brand, so will this help them win again in 2012, or will the competition be too fierce for them? Only you can determine this, by casting your vote for the Best Brand category for the 2012 World Vendor Awards.

This year 20 great telecom hardware vendor brands are currently in the running, so vote today to help determine who will be on the final shortlist, to be published at the end of April. Those in the running are:

• Alcatel-Lucent
• Amdocs
• Ciena
• Cisco
• Corning
• Ericsson
• Harris
• HP
• Huawei
• Juniper Networks
• Motorola
• NEC
• NetCracker
• Nokia Siemens Networks
• Openwave
• Qualcomm
• Syniverse
• Telcordia
• Tellabs
• ZTE

The Best Brand survey is hosted on Survey Monkey, and you can vote by following this link, or you can go to the homepage of the World Vendor Awards www.worldvendorawards.com and vote there. 

We anticipate an event-full week

The week might be eventful but it will certainly be event-full. On Tuesday we have our last Breakfast with Total Telecom for 2011, Next Generation Cloud Services, as well as discovering the results of the PPA's 2011 Independent Publisher Awards. On Wednesday the cameras will be out for Film Day, whilst Friday is the deadline for entries for the 2012 World vendor Awards.

Tomorrows breakfast briefing looks like a busy affair with fantastic speakers from COLT, CE On-Demand, NTT Europe, Verizon Business, as well as sponsors HP, and IDC who are moderating. You can meet the speakers on the event website, and there are still a few seats available.

At lunch tomorrow we discover if Total Telecom are the winners as the Professional Publishers Association (PPA) unveils the winners for this years Independent Publisher Awards (#Indpub). We're up for Digital Brand of the Year (which we won in 2010) and also for Media Brand of the Year. If you hear cheering from the direction of Vinopolis, it might well be the Total Telecom team!

Wednesday will see Total TeleVision busy at Film Day, generating more great executive insight for our channel. The next event will be early in 2012, so worth baring in mind if you are looking for pre-MobileWorld Congress expsoure for your executives...

Finally, Friday will see the traditional rush of companies getting their entries in for the 2012 World Vendor Awards (#wva2012). With new categories including areas such as Best Cloud Solution and The Small Cells Award we anticipate fierce competition. Don't miss out, get your entry in.

All in all, it's going to be busy. Who said it quietens down before Christmas?