Alcatel Lucent targets the 'Dynamic Enterprise'

Less than two years after its merger, Alcatel Lucent is already reporting a sharp rise in growth and a slew of new products based on combined technology.

Speaking at Alcatel Lucent's annual enterprise forum event in Paris, chief executive Pat Russo detailed how the increasing deployment and integration of communications technology into enterprise systems is driving sales as well as fuelling a cultural shift among customers.

"The way we communicate is really transforming at an ever increasing rate. The companies that follow this, view technology as a critical part of their strategy," said Russo.

"As a company we have worked to reposition the business to focus on the high growth markets of mobility and security."

This shift in business attitudes to communications, which Russo is calling the 'Dynamic Enterprise concept', involves businesses integrating networks, people, processes and knowledge, based on IP networking and standards-based technologies and frameworks.

Alcatel Lucent is heavily pushing the notion of converged communications and anywhere access, with a number of new products being announced this week and in the coming months to underpin mobile enterprise security, along with data and application security, device and user authentication, and regulatory compliance. Much of the new product work is emerging from Bell Labs, the highly-respected research and development arm of Lucent, which is now the hub of the company's new product development strategy.

"Systems and data must be in a trusted environment, as well as being available to the business. Security needs to be safe, but without holding back use and productivity," added Russo.

The company is also focusing heavily on so-called Web 2.0 technologies such as social networking, and developing technologies to integrate such offerings into enterprise software and services, as well as building infrastructure to support the growing bandwidth demands of sites such as YouTube.

"Photo and video sharing services like Flickr and YouTube are redefining how we communicate, and making visual communication more practical and accessible. So much so that YouTube is now responsible for 10 per cent of all web traffic," said Tom Burns, head of Alcatel Lucent's enterprise business group.

Users will receive around 40,000 emails in a year, though Burns was unclear as to how much of this would be spam.

"There are 300 million people using social networking globally. Today another 200,000 people will join Facebook alone. These products serve a relevant and important communications role, and companies need to transform to embrace them."

The company is also moving heavily into service oriented architecture (SOA) with new hardware devices and partnerships.

"Compliance with data regulations like HIPPA, Basel II and Sarbanes Oxley is critical, particularly in our vertical sectors such as healthcare. It means that any SOA needs to have security and compliance in place to ensure a company meets today's legislation and industry requirements, and can evolve them," said Clifford Grossner, Alcatel Lucent's product manager for its web services internet venture.

The company today announced a deal with HP to integrate its OmniAccess 8550 appliance Web Services Gateway with HP's Openview, Systinet and SOA Manager to create a single point of integration for SOA verification, management and authentication, with support for HP's Select Fed identity management platform to follow.

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