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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Unified communications specialist Mitel (Nasdaq: MITL) has scored a win with the Canadian government, landing a deal with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade to deploy its IP telephony solution.

The company said the DFAIT would be installing Mitel's Freedon architecture, giving it the flexibility to connect its users around the world and adding new capabilities as part of its future communications needs. The agreement covers a rollout of a new communications infrastructure to support DFAIT's international users in its Canadian missions, consulates and embassies around the world.

DFAIT said that Mitel's flexibility of deployment options, which addresses the range of needs it had across multiple locations and supports virtualization, was central to the decision.

The Mitel solution incorporates:

• Mitel Communications Director software, a single stream of software deployable on multiple hardware platforms, in virtualized data centers, on industry standard servers or on Mitel hardware;
• Mitel Communications Director, which extends Dynamic Extension and hotdesking capabilities to all users; users can select up to eight devices in their personal ring group, regardless of type, so calls to a business number can ring on a mobile phone, home phone, remote office or on any other device;
• Mitel NuPoint Messenger IP, a scalable way to relay, store and retrieve messages from a phone, fax machine, pager or PC.

UC is hot with the government market as it looks to cut costs. A variety of vendors have seen success in local, state and federal markets in the U.S.

Also gaining speed is the mobile UC market, and Mitel in September rolled out UC apps for the iPhone and iPad.

For more:
- see this release

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Webcasting specialist MediaPlatform has added a couple of new features to its WebCaster platform, both designed to enhance its cloud-based webcasting software to meet increasing demand worldwide.

The Los Angeles-based company added support for UTF-8, a universal character set transformation format, which now will allow WebCaster to include text in any language.

The company also said it had incorporated Adobe Stage Video feature into the WebCaster video player, enabling improved video playback quality and reducing processor usage by up to 85 percent.

"Video use is increasing significantly in the enterprise, but it will explode even more when these companies are able to reach their international audiences more effectively with high quality video and lower processing requirements," said Denis Khoo, chief technology officer at MediaPlatform.  "By adding support for features such as UTF-8 and Stage Video, WebCaster continues to add the functionality our customers are demanding to make webcasting an even more attractive means of communicating company-wide."

Adobe's Stage Video helps websites and webcasts deliver video across screens and browsers by enabling access to hardware acceleration of the entire video pipeline.

MediaPlatform offers WebCaster as both a cloud-based and premise-based platform.

For more:
- see this release

Rumors that Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) has agreed to sell its call center business to London private equity firm Permira Advisers pushed the firms stock priced up to its highest level in the past eight months.

The Financial Times reported Alcatel-Lucent has agreed to sell its Genesys division, a business it acquired in 2000, for $1.5 billion, and will make an announcement that the deal has been finalized in coming weeks.

Alcatel-Lucent and Permira have been negotiating a deal for Alcatel-Lucent's enterprise phone business for several months. In September rumors surfaced that those negotiations had broken down over price squabbles, and the focus had changed to a Genesys-only deal.

A deal for Genesys, instead of for the entire enterprise phone division, struck some analysts as problematic, since it's arguably the crown jewel of the unit. Selling the entire unit would have been more in-line with Alcatel-Lucent's needs.

The FT said Alcatel-Lucent now would likely invest more in its enterprise phone unit to make it more attractive to other bidders, foremost Siemens Enterprise Communications, which had been mentioned as one of its suitors earlier this autumn.

For more:
- see this FT report

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With the growing adoption of tablets by consumers and enterprises, it's no surprise that more videoconferencing vendors are targeting them as endpoints.

ViVu's group conferencing service comes to Apple's iPad 2 and iPhone 4.

Desktop videoconferencing solution provider ViVu, which offers a monthly service for under $10, this week rolled out its own app for Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPad 2 and iPhone 4. The iOS component means the videoconferencing product now is available on PCs, Macs, Android devices and iOS devices, without requiring any proprietary hardware.

ViVu is one of a number of vendors offering a scalable cloud-based architecture and enterprise-class secure platforms, without any proprietary hardware.

Using VuRoom, up to 8 users can upstream video from their own devices and collaborate with session participants through slide and desktop sharing.

 "ViVu is committed to delivering secure and scalable videoconferencing solutions--and ensuring that they address all of the requirements for today's emerging people-centric computing model," said Sudha Valluru, founder and chief executive at ViVu.

ViVu's videoconferencing solutions for iOS devices still include the following features:

• Shared desktop capabilities, including animated PowerPoint presentations, slides and documents;
• A user-friendly, intuitive graphical user interface (GUI) to make it as streamlined as possible for users to immediately benefit from visual collaboration; and
• ‘Tivo-like' instant playback and archive capabilities for additional review or knowledge sharing; and

ViVu's videoconferencing solutions are currently undergoing review by Apple and will be available free-of-charge through Apple's App Store shortly. To view a demonstration of the ViVu videoconferencing solution on the iPad2, click here.

The privately held company was founded in 2008.

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.

For more:
- see this Bloomberg report
- see this No Jitter article

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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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Metaswitch Forum 2010 kicked off this week and Metaswitch's CEO Kevin DeNuccio took the stage to assure attendees that the industry was much healthier than rumors might imply. The CEO took a moment discuss the threats to the voice industry refuting the claim that the Internet has killed the voice market.

He brought up the interesting trend that 25 percent of US homes now do not have a fixed-voice line. Fixed line services are now expected to be built around broadband, but he insisted that there are still business models for profitable voice services and it's just a matter of innovation. 

DeNuccio discussed the company's own research polling its customers. They found that their customers saw federal regulation as a top threat, followed by the cable companies and Google. Beyond those were CLECs and Apple. DeNuccio noted that federal regulation wasn't something they could really control, but in regards to the other threats, innovations and growth would be key to overcoming these new market pressures.

For more:
- read the Connected Planet coverage
- read the TMC coverage

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WebWorkerDaily has a cool write up about the office phone-to-iPhone app phenomenon. They discuss Alcatel-Lucent's latest app supporting their collaboration suite and also Microsoft's SharePoint. Article

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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Polycom announced a new initiative to increase the video collaboration between higher education institutions and businesses. Through a partnership with Internet2, the networking consortium led by the research and education community, Polycom is launching the E2BConnect program aimed at expanding video collaboration between academia and business.

The program can first connect educational facilities to work remotely together to expand class offerings with professors at other universities. The main drive, however, will be to connect businesses with colleges and universities to help with professional development, aid in the interviewing and recruitment for graduates to future jobs, and allow professionals in various businesses to add their expertise to learning experiences remotely. Additionally, businesses will now have access to top academics and researchers in their field when they need an expert opinion.

E2B is already being employed by universities such as Duke University, Georgetown University and the University of Wisconsin.

For more:
- read the release

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