Alcatel-Lucent prepares small-business push in U.S.

Alcatel-Lucent SA is preparing to extend its combined telephony and e-mail offering for small business customers to the U.S. later this year.

The offering will be built on the OmniPCX Office telephony server and the Eye-Box, an e-mail and groupware server that also hosts Web-based services for remote workers. Both are aimed at small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) and are based on the Linux operating system.

"We need to start to enter the SME sector in the U.S.," said Alcatel-Lucent's Tom Burns, general manager of the company's enterprise network infrastructure business, speaking at the Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Forum in Paris this week.

Burns said he would work with the Alcatel-Lucent sales teams that have been collaborating with Verizon Communications Inc. to develop an offering based on OmniPCX Office to complement Verizon's IP (Internet Protocol) edge routers.

"I hope to see some of this coming to fruition toward the end of this year," he said.

The OmniPCX Office, offering VOIP (voice over IP) and circuit-switched telephony services, voicemail and other services is already doing well in Asia, Australia and China, Burns said. And not just in Asia: it's selling in Europe too.

MGCE, a French wholesaler of Alcatel-Lucent equipment exhibiting at the Forum, has been selling the OmniPCS Office/Eye-Box bundle for some months. The 14-person company uses it internally, too, said company representative Ousamma Tazi.

The Eye-Box comes in two versions: the Compact Edition, licensed for up to 25 users, and the Premium Edition, for up to 300 users. They differ in their processor power and the capacity of their hard disks. The Eye-box can deliver e-mail and calendar information in two ways: either through Microsoft Corp.'s Outlook client, or via a Web interface. Via its Web interface, mobile workers can consult their voicemail or reroute calls on their office line to their mobile phone.

Alcatel-Lucent only sells the communications bundle to SMEs through resellers, who can also advise the end-user on telecommunications services. Before its merger with Lucent Technologies Inc., Alcatel SA was involved in selling a similar bundle of unified communications hardware and services with France Télécom SA and Hewlett-Packard Co., under the name ReadyOffice. However, that offering sank without a trace.

Alcatel-Lucent sees great potential for VOIP in the SME market. While around 70 percent of its switchboard sales to large customers are based on IP technology, the figure is only 10 percent in the SME market, said Philippe Mielle, director of the French regional support center for the company's enterprise business group.

Given that OmniPCX Office and the Eye-Box are both Linux-based, Mielle and others at Alcatel-Lucent expect to see the two combined into a single box offering telephony, e-mail and mobility services some time next year.