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Alcatel-Lucent Corporate News

Alcatel-Lucent to Focus on LTE

As reported on Friday, Alcatel-Lucent plans to undergo some strategic realignment of its core efforts, and among other things it means that there will be less attention on WiMAX in favor of a strategy that calls for a stronger focus on LTE or long-term evolution. Some analysts would think that's merely a prudent reaction to the market.   According to a recent Infonetics report:   ...worldwide sales of fixed and mobile WiMAX equipment and phones/Ultra Mobile PCs dropped 21% to $245 million in 3Q08 from 2Q08, and are expected to continue sliding through 2009 as the economic recession puts the squeeze on this early market.   Even Clearwire CEO Ben Wolff said that his company -- clearly a leading poster child for WiMAX -- would also consider deploying LTE down the road "if it makes sense for us to do so."   Of course, that's not to say that Clearwire is backing away from WiMAX, but it does go to show that equipment manufacturers need to place their bets on one side or the other in this evolving battle, not both. Blogging on the 4G Wireless Evolution site, resident expert Paul Kapustka has more on that subject.

ALU Announces Strategic Vision for 2009 and Beyond

Alcatel-Lucent CEO Ben Verwaayen spoke to media and analysts at a press conference today, announcing the company's strategic plan for 2009 and beyond. To read a full description of the company's plans, please read this article.   Verwaayen promised to work closely with Alcatel-Lucent's service provider, enterprise and application partners to "innovate, collaborate and partner... to stimulate a sustainable business model for the industry that will fuel innovation and the capital investment required to expand the overall web experience to more people and businesses."   The company will undergo a strategic reduction in workforce, eliminating approximately 1,000 management positions and lowering the number of contractor headcount by approximately 5,000.   Plans call for reducing the company's break-even point by 1 Billion Euros a year in 2009 and 2010.   Company officials also spoke of a renewed focus on research and development activities, targeting four key segments (Optical, IP, broadband and Applications enablement).

ALU Earns Spot in Leaders Quadrant

Alcatel-Lucent has been placed in the leaders quadrant of the recently published Gartner, report "Magic Quadrant for Contact Center Infrastructure, Worldwide."   According to the report, "Gartner defines contact center infrastructure as the products (equipment, software and services) needed to operate call and contact centers. This type of infrastructure is used by customer and employee service and support centers, inbound and outbound telemarketing services, help-desk services, government-operated support centers, and other types of structured communications operation. The interactions can be human-assisted or automated self-service, using interactive voice response (IVR) and speech recognition technologies, for example. These channels for interaction use both live agents and messaging technology, and include voice, Web, e-mail, instant messaging, chat, video and mobile devices."   Alcatel-Lucent, when including its Genesys business unit, was ranked No. 2 in worldwide contact center infrastructure end user revenues market share based in 2007 with a combined share of 17.6 percent.   Alcatel-Lucent contact center solutions are a key asset of a dynamic enterprise, in which resources of the business -- its network, people, process and knowledge -- are closely linked to drive top and bottom line growth.

ALU Wins Femtocell Deal From Chunghwa Telecom

A recent ABI Research study posited that although femtocells hold tremendous promise for carriers, 2008 would pass as a fairly low-key year for femtocell vendors, with only "about 100,000 units" expected to ship in this year. 2009 will bear more fruit and 2010 will be the year when the market moves to double-digit millions in volume.   Well Alcatel-Lucent is doing their part to move the deployment numbers in the right direction, announcing a femtocell contract from Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan's largest telecommunications provider, to deploy the first femtocell network in Taiwan, which is designed to enhance the coverage of Chunghwa Telecom's mobile network inside homes and offices.   Alcatel-Lucent will supply the operator with a comprehensive end-to-end solution including its Base Station Router (BSR) Femto -- which incorporates 3G W-CDMA radio access and core network elements into a single unit. The deployment will also include service routers and Home Device Manager from Motive, now part of Alcatel-Lucent's portfolio.  

Telecom New Zealand Chooses Alcatel-Lucent for IP MPLS

When faced with the need to accommodate the need to backhaul traffic from its cellular W-CDMA and High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) traffic, Telecom new Zealand turned to Alcatel-Lucent and its IP Multi-Protocol Label Switching (IP/MPLS)-based mobile backhaul solution.
The solution features ALU's pseudowire technology, which is designed to adapts various traffic and media types from the W-CDMA base stations into IP/MPLS. Telecom New Zealand sees this as a benefit for future-proofing their solution, as they transition to a W-CDMA and HSPA deployment. By deploying ALU's solution, the backhaul network will have the flexibility and cost-effective scalability needed to support strong traffic growth and will allow the operator to scale and rapidly roll out innovative mobile broadband services.   According to the release:   Alcatel-Lucent's pseudowire solution includes the 7705 Service Aggregation Router (SAR) which is deployed in cellular base station sites to consolidate and aggregate traffic. The Alcatel-Lucent 7705 SAR allows service providers to scale traffic and simultaneously flatten their cost-curves for leased bandwidth, therefore improving their competitiveness. The 7705 SAR inherits its software architecture from the widely deployed IP/MPLS Service Router product line, retaining and building on its qualities but at a price and form factor appropriate to the cell site and hubs.  

Estonia: ALU Helps Elion Deliver Triple Play

Alcatel-Lucent this week announced an agreement with Elion Enterprises Ltd., the largest telecommunications provider in Estonia, to offer an improved triple play (voice, data and video) experience to Elion's customers.   Estonia has one of the highest rates of broadband penetration per capita in the world, and its citizens are savvy consumers of next generation services. Still any technological advance that enables more thorough support and simpler management of the deployed solution is a welcome addition by all parties.   To that end, Alcatel-Lucent will deploy its home network management solution, providing streamlined and automated installation and customer support as well as sophisticated diagnostic information, thus helping Elion reduce its operational costs and improve the quality of experience for its subscribers.   "As they introduce advanced triple-play offerings, service providers open customers' homes to devices and applications that create a more complex home environment. To that end, effective home network management is a must-have," said Lars Boilesen, responsible for Alcatel-Lucent's activities in the Nordic and Baltic countries.    

Beyond Cost Savings: Leveraging VoIP for Innovation

Even in a slow economy, enterprises need to consider purchasing solutions that will help make them more productive, more efficient and better positioned to ward off competitors.   Alcatel-Lucent has launched a new OmniSwitch 9000E, in a move designed to help enterprises make more money while helping workers improve productivity and customer service. TMCnet had a chance to interview Patrick Thorel, director of large enterprise solutions marketing at Alcatel-Lucent, about the new solution, as well as about how this slower economy is fueling interest in unified platforms and the lure of VoIP for large enterprises.   According to Thorel, VoIP's major draw for those companies isn't cost-savings, but gaining a platform for voice application integration and innovation.   To check out the interview, please follow this link.  

In Tough Economy, Innovation Holds the Key

Alcatel-Lucent, currently undergoing a strategy review under their new CEO, recently said that market conditions are forcing the firm to lower their 2008 sales expectations by 2-5 percent, according to this Reuters item.   However, the article also reported that ALU's investor relations chief, Remi Thomas, said he believed "carriers would continue to invest in strategic areas designed to generate new business, in capital equipment that could reduce operating expenses, and to meet regulatory requirements."   It is precisely this need for customers to generate new business that should help firms that develop innovative telecom solutions to weather the financial storms roiling the global markets.   A recent article by Xavier Martin, who handles Strategic Marketing for the Enterprise Solutions Division at Alcatel-Lucent, speaks to the evolution currently underway at enterprises across the globe. In the article, The Dynamic Enterprise - Leveraging 2.0 Applications, the author states that:   Over the next few months and years, a growing number of mid-market, large and multinational companies will learn that significant gains can be made by integrating tangible and intangible organizational assets - network, people, processes and collective knowledge - to boost productivity and efficiency and achieve a competitive advantage.   Martin also speaks of the need for CIOs to evolve in step with the needs of their evolving enterprise to ensure that the technology is implemented in a seamless way to achieve the goals of the organization:   Their new responsibilities make it necessary for them to look beyond technology toward enabling business objectives such as attracting customers and supporting key processes. Thus, in Dynamic Enterprises, CIOs must carefully tailor their portfolio of projects with an eye to realizing a comprehensive business transformation over a period of time.   Check out the full article here.

ALU, BT Extend Services Pact

Building on a Multi-Vendor Managed Services contract signed in November 2006, Alcatel-Lucent has announced a seven-year extension of its partnership with UK carrier BT, focused on the support of BT's global network operations. According to published reports, Alcatel-Lucent will manage most of the legacy networks serving BT Global Services' customers, thus freeing up BT to focus on its next-generation communications initiative, the BT Global 21CN Platform. During the first phase of the project Alcatel-Lucent will assume operations for five legacy global and domestic networks in 27 countries outside the UK, along with the BT Global Managed Platform legacy transport network. 

North Africa to See Enterprise Voice & Data

Tunisia telecomm integrator TTE and Alcatel-Lucent have joined forces to supply enterprise voice and data solutions in the North African nations of Libya and Tunisia. The agreement will showcase the two firms' common skills and technological abilities and broaden their presence in North Africa. Alcatel-Lucent and TTE will work together to offer complete and secure communication solutions while evolving the network infrastructure to help businesses and governments increase competitiveness and cost-effectiveness. To mark the special occasion, an open house will be held on Nov. 13, 2008 at "Les Berges du Lac Concorde Hotel" in Tunis, Tunisia. 
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