Alcatel-Lucent's OpenTouch Suite Targets Business Communications

Alcatel-Lucent is rolling out a platform designed to enable businesses to mesh at the same time and leverage the various methods they communicate, not only internally nevertheless also with clients.

The company's Dynamic Tour 2011 event April 5

During the company's Dynamic Tour 2011 event April 5, Alcatel-Lucent officials unveiled their OpenTouch suite of communications solutions in other words built upon technologies introduced last year. OpenTouch is designed to let users move seamlessly between the wide range of communications devices and modes, and takes into account consumer technologies as smartphones and social media that quickly are making their in the business world.

OpenTouch is designed to encompass multiple parties on multiple devices and using multi-media tools, according to Craig Walker, the director of product marketing of communications solutions for Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise.

"You can seamlessly move between all these devices and all of these modes of communications," Walker said in an interview with eWEEK.

The way people can communicate is rapidly expanding beyond the traditional one-to-one, phone-based environment. Video, chat, IM, e-mail, and audio and Web conferencing are all in play, and employees are using a wide range of devices-from smartphones and tablets to SIP and video endpoint-to collaborate.

Communications innovation vendors are looking for ways to bring all these avenues and devices at the same time, and making them work more seamlessly at the same time and easier to manage. Avaya is leveraging the ACE platform it acquired when it bought Nortel Network's enterprise business in late 2009. Avaya's ACE is designed to create a single multimedia communications middleware platform that enables greater collaboration among a business' employees.

Key communications platform between businesses

Alcatel-Lucent's Walker said OpenTouch as well will serve as a key communications platform between businesses and their clients. According to the company, its Genesys SIP Server and OmniPCX Enterprise offerings will serve as foundations for OpenTouch's capability for creating a converged and open architecture for multi-party, multi-device and multi-media interaction in enterprises.

With OpenTouch, collaboration between employees or between businesses and clients can seamlessly move from one communications device to another-say, from a smartphone to a video conferencing endpoint-and from one mode to another-voice to video, for instance. Just in case, enterprises can manage it all from a single console, Walker said.

The OpenTouch suite is the OpenTouch Business Edition

Included in the OpenTouch suite is the OpenTouch Business Edition, which targets the midmarket that can be run on-premises or through a hosted environment. Both the on-premise and hosted versions will be available in June and can support up to 1,500 users or 3,000 devices.

Alcatel-Lucent's OpenTouch Multimedia Services solution enables businesses to leverage Alcatel-Lucent's OmniPCX Enterprise Communications Server, which protects the investments the vendor's clients already have made in their communications platforms, and offers those clients a migration path to an environment with more parties, device and media. This, too, will be released in June.

In addition, Alcatel-Lucent's OpenTouch Federation Services solution, which lets businesses consolidate SIP trunking and dialing plans for multi-vendor PBX (Private -Automatic- Branch Exchange)s and offers the least cost routing for mobile phones, will be available in the fourth quarter.