Alcatel Enters U.S. Enterprise Voice Market With World-Class IP-based System; Company Leverages the Convergence of Its Data and Voice-Networking Portfolio - Alcatel's Alcatel OmniPCX 4400 - Product Announcement

Cambridge Telcom Report, Jan 31, 2000

Alcatel Monday announced it is entering the North American enterprise voice market with the launch of the Alcatel OmniPCX 4400, offering business users the world's most advanced IP-based enterprise system.

The OmniPCX 4400 is the materialization of the combination of Alcatel's data networking product suite formed from the recent acquisitions of Packet Engines and Xylan, and the company's long lasting European leadership in voice networking.

"We are now addressing the U.S. enterprise market with a world-class offering, taking advantage of the opportunity created by the convergence of voice and data technologies," said Olivier Houssin, Alcatel Telecom executive vice-president.

Unique features of the Alcatel OmniPCX 4400 include scalability from 50 to 50,000 users, innovative ReflexesTM telephone handsets, 99.999 percent reliability, one-number mobility, unified messaging, voice-over-IP networking with quality of service management, Web-based customer contact center and integrated voice and data network management. These features all work together to reduce the cost of ownership of enterprise communication networks.

The Alcatel OmniPCX 4400 is entirely based on a client/server UNIX architecture and demonstrates Alcatel's commitment to open systems. The strength of the OmniPCX 4400's open architecture is its ability to integrate easily with networking infrastructure and application technologies from any supplier committed to open standards.

"With Alcatel's entry into the U.S, all of the leading global PBX suppliers are finally competing against each other for the first time in the same geographic market," said Allan Sulkin, president of TEQConsult Group, a leading enterprise communications consulting firm. "Alcatel's new product combines all of the features and functions that customers are demanding of their PBX system in the new era of IP-based telephony, without foregoing the traditional fundamentals of reliable call processing and switching functions. Alcatel's offering and resources become a new competitive threat to the existing hierarchy of U.S. PBX vendors."

The OmniPCX 4400 is an integral part of Alcatel's overall OmniSolutions for Enterprise initiative. It includes the OmniSwitch, OmniStack and OmniCore data networking product families from Alcatel's recent acquisitions of Packet Engines and Xylan, and the OmniVista network management system. The OmniPCX 4400 will also benefit from the world-class contact center applications from Genesys, an important Alcatel acquisition also announced Monday.

"There is today a dramatic shift happening in the enterprise market, from traditional PBXs -- the telephone systems that have been the basis for voice communication for the last 25 years -- to the PCX -- the IP telephony private communication exchange," Houssin added. "With the OmniPCX 4400, we are entering a totally new market space with a world-class innovation. It brings together organizations' networking and IT systems with the Internet, to align voice communications more tightly with computer applications."

According to the Gartner Group, the timing of Alcatel's market entry is right. The leading IT consultancy reports that over the next three years significant new technologies will come to market that will cause companies to redesign and replace existing voice and data networks, and International Data Corporation predicts that the U.S. market for IP telephony will grow at an annual average rate of 55 percent over four years, reaching $600 million in 2003.

"We see a lot of change coming for our voice network as we scale our systems to keep pace with company growth, provide more tools for our users and lower support costs. The Alcatel system promises to help us on all three fronts," said Jerry Marella, director of global telecommunications for Computer Associates International Inc. (CA) "We need our phone systems to be rock-solid, and our experience with the Alcatel product shows that it is easy to implement and very dependable." CA uses the OmniPCX 4400 in offices in Europe, Asia and South America, with a U.S. implementation planned for Q1.

The U.S. launch of the OmniPCX 4400 will enable Alcatel's international customers to deploy a seamless voice and data network throughout the world. And U.S. customers will benefit from the company's decades of experience in supporting enterprise networks and from its extensive support and service organization.

The OmniPCX 4400 and other OmniSolutions will be on display in Alcatel's booth (No. 1626) at the ComNet trade show in Washington, D.C. General availability in North America is estimated for Q3 2000.

Alcatel builds next-generation networks, delivering integrated end-to-end voice and data networking solutions to established and new carriers, as well as enterprises and consumers worldwide. With 120,000 employees and sales of $25.0 billion, Alcatel operates in more than 130 countries. For more information, visit Alcatel at www.alcatel.com.