Alcatel-Lucent allows firms to reach out on so many levels

SINGAPORE—Businesses are fortunate nowadays in that there are so many ways for them to reach out and communicate with their employees and customers.

But conversations may get muddled at one point precisely because of this deluge of channels, such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs, e-mail and text messaging services.

“Enterprises have come to face a set of challenges brought on by the proliferation of communication channels, groups and sophisticated personal communication devices owned by employees, or their customers, who now want to be able to use them in the enterprise network,” said Brian Riggs, research director for current analysis at Alcatel-Lucent Enterprises.

“It’s only through the support of open technologies, such as SIP [session initiation protocol], that IT managers will be able to support the numerous devices and channels in a manner that they were designed to be used and exploited,” Riggs explained.

Thus, in the “Dynamic Tour 2011” conference held here, Alcatel-Lucent launched its latest solutions that would allow businesses to tap as many of the existing medium as possible through a single platform, so they can more effectively reach out to their customers and employees.

“Companies that do not open up to this innovation will not remain competitive,” warned Tom Burns, president for enterprise and strategic industries at Alcatel-Lucent.

These latest offerings included the Alcatel-Lucent OpenTouch suite, which allows users to seamlessly “hop” from one device or medium to another. It is built on an easy-to-manage platform that supports multiparty, multidevice and multimedia conversation, allowing businesses to better engage with their customers, partners and peers.

The Alcatel-Lucent OmniTouch 8082 My IC phone is a smart desk phone that allows users to immediately bring other people into a multiparty conference session or access a range of applications to speed up the decision-making process.

Simply put, it extends communications beyond simple voice calls.

Alcatel’s data center switching solution (the “mesh” and “pod”) are two architecture breakthroughs that will allow businesses to leverage its IT resources and optimize application delivery to employees across sites and devices.

With the data center switching solution, businesses can set up a virtualized network for data centers, so users from any location can easily take advantage of real-time applications across any device.

By bringing together multiple parties across any device and medium, Alcatel-Lucent has enabled businesses to transform the traditional one-party, voice-only communications into seamless conversations that can leverage a range of applications.

As a result, enterprises can now more easily harness the power of consumer communication innovations to improve engagement with customers and employees.

On top of that, these solutions are expected to improve productivity and reduce operational costs.

These solutions, said Michael McBrian, SVP for Alcatel Lucent Asia Pacific, could also help Philippine businesses get ahead of the game.

“[The Philippines] is an interesting marketplace. There’s a strong service consumer demand, both for middle-class consumers and enterprises, which are starting to grow. That’s a good environment for us to sell our products,” McBrian said.

In the Philippines, Alcatel-Lucent is in talks with the airline companies, government agencies and different financial institutions that may have a need for its solutions.

“But honestly, out of all the Asean countries, the Philippines is one of the most developed markets where we are probably weakest.… But we are investing here because we see a lot of opportunities in the Philippines,” McBrian said.