Alcatel Lucent Releases New Communication Applications and Deskphones

Alcatel-Lucent’s Enterprise division introduced new business communications and collaboration appliances as a service. This suite of applications as a service (AaaS) is designed for teams, departments, or individual employees, providing cloud-hosted communications for businesses large and small alike.

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise’s AaaS suite, the OpenTouch Personal Cloud (OTPC), is offered as a cloud-hosted overlay. Businesses can use it to deploy the communications solutions they feel work best for them, without having to tear down their existing services or install any new hardware or software.

The applications are all accessible through PC or Mac web browsers, as well as smartphone and tablet applications. OTPC also has a dedicated website, the Personal Cloud Space, from which business partners and customers can manage their accounts and settings. The Personal Cloud Space offers a visual representation of the company’s application consumption, providing a clear view of what service is being used by who and how often.

There are currently three applications available via OpenTouch Personal Cloud. The OpenTouch Conference provides audio conferencing and web meetings that can be easily managed and shared, done in part with Alcatel-Lucent’s technology partner LoopUp. The OpenTouch Video Store lets employees create and share video content, through which they can create informative video content or messages for both internal and external contacts. Last but not least is the OpenTouch Team Share, which provides an enterprise-grade cloud file sharing tool; project teams can use it to share information to and from any device, providing better control of their projects.

"With Open Touch Personal Cloud, ALU Enterprise has continued the trend of vendors migrating from hardware to software and finally to the cloud,” says Jon Arnold, UC Expert for UCStrategies and Principal of J Arnold & Associates. “This provides greater flexibility for employees to utilize UC from any location, along with being a channel-friendly solution to help accelerate UC adoption. Complementing this, they have also announced a more conventional UC suite with OpenTouch 2.0, along with a new lineup dubbed Premium Deskphones which supports wideband audio, IPv6, Bluetooth and other advanced features."

For those who remain behind a desk, though, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise is introducing a new range of deskphones, providubg a range of features and high quality audio, along with ergonomic enhancements for comfort while working. They can be used with Bluetooth technology, and are designed to be future proof for whatever may come next. The five devices being released are the 8068, 8038, and 8028 Premium DeskPhones, and the 8029 and 8039 Premium DeskPhones.

With more applications available in the future, the current applications available through OpenTouch Personal Cloud cover the necessities of collaboration and communication in today’s mobile, BYOD environment.