Last October, Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) sold its Genesys call-center business for $1.5 billion and, in the process, lost over $500 million in annual revenue from the division.

Genesys just wrapped up its first 100 days as a stand-alone company, and it's a good bet AlcaLu is looking fondly at its former business... and coveting the revenues the company continues to generate.

Genesys is eager to let folks know that life after Alcatel-Lucent is just fine, thank you. The Daly City, Calif.-based company said it continued its "consistent track record of year-over-year revenue growth for full-year 2011."

In its first quarter on its own, the company said it achieved 13 percent year-over-year growth, with annual revenues of over $500 million.

In Q1 2012, the newly formed stand-alone company launched its mobile customer-care solution, Social Engagement, and "maintained a leading presence in the market," with "strong customer momentum" behind its workforce optimization, social customer service and SIP-based solutions, as well as its pay-per-use and hosted offerings.

"We're pleased to report that the new, stand-alone Genesys is off to a strong start," said Paul Segre, president and CEO of Genesys. "Our business is growing and we're continuing to innovate in the customer experience space, driven by a planned 14 percent increase in R&D investment this year and the passion of our people, which is evident everyday in the results we are achieving with customers."

Among other highlights in the quarter:

For the full year of 2011, the company achieved approximately 8 percent growth over 2010;

Saw 35 percent growth in pay-per-use and hosted solutions, and 80 percent growth in workforce optimization.

Maintained a healthy EBITDA of more than 20 percent.

Saw South Africa's Vodacom and the UK's Everything Everywhere going live with Genesys' social customer service solution, Social Engagement.

Reached 300,000 seats for its SIP Server solution, fueling a shift away from PBX-based contact centers to pure software SIP-based solutions.

For more:
- see this release

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Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) moved past Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR)in terms of carrier infrastructure market share in 4Q2011, a new study says, only the second time in the past four years Alca-Lu has pulled ahead into second place behind perennial leader Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO).

The report, from Synergy Research Group, attributed Alcatel-Lucent's surge to a solid performance in the EMEA region, where it saw strong revenue growth from the previous quarter. Juniper's struggles in the past quarter allowed Alcatel-Lucent to take a clear market share lead of 2.7 percentage points in the quarter. For the full year Juniper did maintain its number two ranking, with a market share of 18.2 percent versus 16.8 percent for Alcatel-Lucent.

Jeremy Duke, founder and chief analyst of Synergy, said Alcatel-Lucent and Juniper both nevertheless saw strong growth in the EMEA region, recording market shares of more than 25 percent and 22 percent respectively in the final quarter.

Synergy's 4Q11 Carrier Infrastructure Market Share report provides quarterly market shares for service provider core routers, edge routers, and carrier Ethernet switches.

Overall carrier infrastructure revenues hovered around the $3 billion mark for the third successive quarter, with full-year revenues inching ahead 3.5 percent from 2010. But the fourth quarter wasn't kind to the segment; revenues were actually down almost 10 percent from a year ago.

"There was plenty of good news for Cisco in the quarter, including a market share gain in the high-growth APAC region, increasing its share of the worldwide service provider core router market to almost 65 percent, and increasing its share of a declining North American edge router and switch market--to levels it hasn't achieved in over three years."

For more:
- see this release

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Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU), which has proffered disappointing earnings over the past six years during which it rolled up some $13.17 billion in losses, Friday reported a $1.46 billion profit in 2011. Its first-ever profit for a full-year follows a $440 million loss in 2010. Shares rose on that news and on the company forecast for improved growth in 2012 and on plans to auction some of its 29,000 patents.

The company Friday said it had free cash flow of $714 million in the quarter, after negative cash from of almost $1.3 billion through the first nine months of the year.

While it did report a profit, some of that was attributable to $464.9 million of deferred tax assets in the United States, and the sale of its Genesys unit, which closed in the quarter and brought in $445.1 million. Alcatel-Lucent said sales for the full year were down 2.1 percent to $20.19 billion from $20.64 billion in 2011.

The Irish Times reported that the sales of the company's patents could "generate several hundred million euros" in 2012; several analysts suggested the company could see up to $1 billion euros in revenue from the sales, which the telecom supplier is offering its patents through a licensing syndicate .

"Licensing is a hot trend in the tech sector right now, but if these numbers turn out to be true, maybe Alcatel should stop everything else and do only licensing," said Thomas Langer of WestLB Equity Markets in Dusseldorf.

For more:
- see this release
- see this Financial Times article
- see this Seeking Alpha transcript

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Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) has rolled out a new solution, called CloudBand, that it says represents a new class of carrier cloud services, which will allow service providers to bring the benefits of the cloud to their own networks and business operations.

CloudBand brings together the computing power and flexibility of the cloud with the high performance, reliability and security of communications networks, putting carriers in an ideal position to offer a new range of high-performance cloud services to enterprises and consumers, said Alcatel-Lucent.

The company is hoping its new offering will be able to overcome the reluctance that enterprise customers, SMBs and governments have shown to invest heavily in cloud solutions. A September survey from SWC Technology Partners showed that one-in-five respondents said they were reluctant to push their operations into the cloud because of concerns over privacy and security.

Nevertheless, service providers have committed $11 billion to could investments in 2011, said Informa analyst Camille Mendler. And a play like Alcatel-Lucent's, one that focuses on control and better performance, could pay off.

CloudBand has two parts: the CloudBand Management System, delivering orchestration and optimization of services between the communications network and the cloud; and the CloudBand Node, which provides the computing, storage and networking hardware and associated software to host a wide range of cloud services.

Bringing the computing and communications network assets together will be a challenge in making the carrier cloud a reality. CloudBand features algorithms developed by Bell Labs to orchestrate the network, as well as computing and data storage elements distributed throughout the network. The result is a single, flexible service delivery and computing platform that can support a wide range of services. That, in turn, eliminates the need for dedicated hardware platforms for each individual service.

CloudBand will be available for deployment in the first half of 2012.

For more:
- see this TechWorld article
- see this release

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Alcatel-Lucent's OpenTouch video conferencing suite, previewed in April and scheduled to start shipping early in the first quarter, has arrived a little early, the company said, and is now generally available.

Built on Alcatel-Lucent's new Enterprise's converged communications architecture, the product leverages OmniPCX Enterprise, Genesys SIP solutions and Alcatel-Lucent carrier technologies. The OpenTouch architecture uses a SIP-based conversation layer, which is between the applications layer and server layer, to deliver multi-party, multi-device, multi-media collaborative conversations. The architecture can facilitate conversations on any network and on any end-point.

OpenTouch includes native conferencing capabilities, supports mixed media, and enables users to move freely between any device within the same conversation. For example, a conversation can begin via instant messaging, voice or text, and be escalated to a video call or team collaboration session. The system lets any user easily add or remove multiple participants as well as make other media connections or links available to participants.

The product is available in three packages, an appliance server based version--its Business Edition--that provides advanced telephony features with embedded unified communications capabilities pre-integrated on a single industry standard appliance server; a hosted edition on a blade server platform--its Business Edition Hosted--that delivers those features and capabilities in a premise version and features extended management functionalities; and its Multimedia Services, a software add-on to complement existing Alcatel-Lucent OmniPCX Enterprise communications servers.

For more:
- see this release

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Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU), which has been trying to slip out of its enterprise phone business for months, today confirmed last week's rumors that it's reached a deal with Permira Funds for its Genesys call center software business.

The $1.5 billion deal makes for a nice bump to Alca-Lu's sagging bottom line, but also leaves it with a somewhat unattractive left over in the form of its enterprise phone business. The Genesys business has by far been its crown jewel in the division, with revenues of $500 million last year. The deal for the 1,800 employee business includes continued support from Alcatel-Lucent's enterprise operation.

"Genesys is widely recognized as one of the world's leading providers of customer service software and contact center solutions, and we are excited by the long-term growth potential of this business," said Brian Ruder, partner at Permira. "With an exceptional brand, differentiated technologies and a blue-chip customer base, Genesys is well-positioned to continue to take advantage of the positive trends in its expanding markets."

The deal is subject to regulatory review in the U.S. and other countries, but is expected to close by the end of 2011 or beginning of 2012.

The negotiations between Alcatel-Lucent and Permira have been back-and-forth over the past couple of months as Permira initially looked at Alca-Lu's entire enterprise business, even reaching the point of exclusive negotiations that push Siemens Enterprise Communications, another potential bidder, to the back burner. Those talks broke down, reportedly over price, and drove Alca-Lu's battered stock down more than 8 percent.

Permira then brought its focus to just the call center segment, which Alcatel-Lucent acquired in 2000.

Selling the entire business, which includes VoIP, unified communications and network management products, as well as switches and router, would have been much preferred by Alca-Lu, which reportedly will now invest in the business to make it more attractive to bidders.

Alcatel-Lucent CEO Ben Verwaayen is looking to pare down the company as he tries to turn it around.

For more:
- see this release

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Alcatel-Lucent's (NYSE: ALU) deal to sell its enterprise phone unit to Permira Advisers, which last week was reported to have collapsed, is continuing to drag the company's stock down today.

Permira reportedly is now in talks to acquire Genesys, the company's call center business, abandoning its exclusive negotiations with Alcatel-Lucent for the entire enterprise unit.

Alcatel-Lucent has been trying to sell the unit for months to no avail; its stock stuttered on the Paris market by nearly 8 percent today, nearly cutting ts gain for the year in half. CEO Ben Verwaayen is looking to pare down the company as he tries to turn it around.

But a deal for Genesys only, contends No Jitter, would only make Alcatel-Lucent's situation more difficult, because Genesys is the "crown jewel" of Alcatel-Lucent's enterprise division.

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- see this Bloomberg report
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Infonetics Research has released new data from its second quarter 2011 "Service Provider Routers and Switches" vendor market share report that show the IP edge market to be posting continuing growth even though the market share leader, Cisco Systems (Nasdaq:CSCO), is starting to get squeezed a bit.

The IP edge market segment, which includes IP edge routers and carrier Ethernet switches, is experiencing vendor growth across the board. Cisco has traditionally dominated the market and continued to show 12 percent revenue growth during the second quarter. However, while Cisco stills owns almost a third of the market with a 32.2 percent share, its hold on the market has slipped sharply in the last 18 months from its first quarter of 2010 marketshare mark of 41.5 percent.

Cisco's competitors, including Huawei, Alcatel-Lucent (Nasdaq:EGHT) and others, have been eating away at its share and have been posting more impressive quarterly revenue increases. In the second quarter alone, Infonetics said Huawei's IP edge revenue grew 66 percent, while Alcatel-Lucent's increased 22 percent. Infonetics said the end-to-end [portfolios and mobile backhaul emphasis that some companies have may be helping them versus Cisco.

Meanwhile, Infonetics said the total service provider router and switch market grew 14 percent sequentially to $3.8 billion worldwide during the second quarter. Year-over-year, the market's increased measured out at 19 percent. The IP edge portion of that market jumped15 percent overall  sequentially in the second quarter, and 21 percent year-over-year.

For more:
- see the Infonetics press release

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HP and Alcatel-Lucent are teaming up to provide new Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC&C) solutions to their customers globally. Although the companies already have a global alliance, the new agreement will enable HP and Alcatel-Lucent to use their combined portfolio to deliver and market end-to-end UC&C solutions to clients.

"Clients want an open, holistic approach to services delivery that maximizes their investment in UC&C," said Gary M. Budzinski, senior vice president and general manager, Technology Services, HP. "The strength of Alcatel-Lucent and HP's combined portfolio provides organizations with open and highly scalable solutions that address the touch points where communication is critical."

The offering combines HP's UC&C consulting services with Alcatel-Lucent's UC technologies like OmniPCX Enterprise and Advanced Communication Server.

For more:
- read the release

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