Arun ShankarWe live in an increasingly unpredictable world. Past events have pushed businesses to their limits. However, they have also opened the door to new opportunities. We have seen that when the world shuts down, the only way companies can continue to operate is within a flexible, cloud-based communications environment. Business continuity is not the only advantage. Cloud technology can also be the answer to overcome severe budgetary constraints.
Cloud, social networks, mobile internet, big data, and importantly, customers are driving enterprises to adopt digital transformation. The combination of social networks, mobile Internet, data lakes, accessible as services from the cloud is transforming how people collaborate.
It is also changing how enterprises want to engage with customers, and more importantly how customers agree to engage with companies. ALE refers to this as digital engagement.
ALE is a French company providing networking and communication equipment and services to businesses of all sizes across industry sectors. Today, ALE has three primary divisions.
The first division is built around telephony, PBX, phones and related equipment, which the vendor has been selling historically as its core competency. The second division of ALE is built around networking equipment, including Wi-Fi, and switches and related equipment. The third division of ALE is its cloud division. The role of this division is to accompany enterprises’ transformation to the cloud.
Previously businesses used to have only phones and PBXs and now they are moving to collaboration. “And this is interesting because not only is it a technology jump to something else, but also a change in the business model, in the way we are selling, in the way we are doing support, and in the way we are operating. So that is what we do actually in this division,” explains Moussa Zaghdoud, Executive Vice-President Cloud Communications Business Division and Board Member, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise.
This division of ALE was started by Zaghdoud, six years ago and has now become a strategic asset of ALE, helping the vendor move forward in digital transformation.
Released in 2017, Rainbow by Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, has become a complete, cloud-based platform providing multiple cloud services to more than a million users every day. Rainbow enables connections between people, processes and objects. A suite of APIs and SDKs are attracting global developers to create a community. Rainbow can be used as a Communication Platform as a Service, CPaaS to enable communications to be at the centre of communications enabled business processes.
On the other hand, Rainbow and its CPaaS capabilities are instrumental in digital engagement, by integrating real-time communications and business applications, with mobile and web applications. Enterprises are able to offer innovative solutions for customer service, to attract and retain their customers.
Building cloud services
For its cloud solutions and services, ALE is using cloud technology hosted at different datacentres around the world. “We have those Rainbow instances in our datacentres in different continents. We have 22 datacentres in five continents, and we are spread there because not only do you need to have these instances, but you are also talking about architecture”, explains Zaghdoud.
ALE is using WebRTC or Web Real-Time Communication technology, which makes its solutions vendor agnostic and browser based. ALE’s cloud solutions are based on scalability, databases, load balancers, proxy service, amongst others, with the idea to scale up to 500,000 concurrent users if required.
According to Wikipedia, WebRTC is an open-source project providing web browsers and mobile applications with real-time communication via application programming interfaces. It allows audio and video communication to work inside web pages by allowing direct peer-to-peer communication, eliminating the need to install plugins or download native apps.
WebRTC is supported by Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Opera. WebRTC specifications have been published by the World Wide Web Consortium and the Internet Engineering Task Force. Other than WebRTC, ALE is using SIP for voice and signalling; XMPP for messaging.
“We need to be elastic enough to make it happen. So, from that perspective, I would say that we are not that different from Zoom or Microsoft Teams. We are touching the same type of technology here,” adds Zaghdoud.
While ALE is using global and open standards in its cloud solutions, Zaghdoud explains ALE is also actively involved in adding and building these global standards for the industry.
For its global cloud hosting, ALE has relationships with hosting providers and less reliance on traditional hyper scalers. ALE is using the European player OVH and IBM. OVH Groupe SAS, is a French cloud computing company which offers VPS, Virtual Private Servers, dedicated servers and other web services. As of 2016 OVH owned the world’s largest datacentre in surface area. As of 2019, it was the largest hosting provider in Europe, and the third largest in the world based on physical servers.
Another reason why ALE is using the European player OVH is related to its sovereign cloud stamp, points out Zaghdoud. He feels this is important in Europe for some of ALE’s key customer segments including the army, government, and educational universities.
Differentiating cloud services
By not using global hyper scalers AWS and Microsoft, ALE offers an alternative to its global customers for data sovereignty, while delivering true cloud architecture and scalability.
Another important aspect of ALE’s cloud solution portfolio is that it does not depend on any third-party software providers to enhance its user experience. It relies on its 100-year baseline of experience and intellectual property in the telecommunication industry to drive its innovation.
“We do not want to be depending on them. All the components in terms of software, are ALE ownership. 100% of Rainbow software is ALE’s property and we do not have any third-party elements over there,” stresses Zaghdoud.
As part of ALE’s vision of digital engagement, Zaghdoud believes ALE’s cloud solutions provide simplicity and ease of use, and strong and readily visible business benefits for end customers. However, the real traction for ALE’s cloud solutions, is when they have the capability to integrate with the existing business processes of the end customer.
As ALE approaches its installed base of global customers and offers them a migration path to the cloud, the ability to work with their existing workflow, collaboration, and communication processes at the end customer’s business is also important.
“What we see as a need as well, beyond the simplicity and beyond the business model, is the integration capabilities. Which means, when we go and explain to our customers, with the renewal of, let’s say, old ones, we have to show them that we have the capabilities to integrate with their business processes,” he adds.
Rainbow by Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise is a CPaaS platform and provides APIs to build integration. Key integrations are with ServiceNow, Google, and Salesforce.
In order to build these integration capabilities, ALE’s cloud solutions have built-in connectors or APIs. ALE is also making these APIs available to developers so that they can integrate ALE’s cloud solutions with theirs.
“At the end, it is super standard. We are using Rest APIs, web services, so anyone that has the skills of this can do it. This was not the case in the past,” says Zaghdoud.
While there are multiple competitor products available in the market, the integration capabilities of ALE’s cloud solutions with a customer’s business processes continues to be a strong differentiator.
Another important expectation from end customers of ALE’s cloud solutions is security and the confidentiality of their data. It is for this reason that ALE is offering their cloud solutions as public hosting with Rainbow Office powered by RingCentral, and private hosting offer with Rainbow by Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise. For existing customers, who need the choice of accessing ALE’s solutions both from public cloud as well as locally, ALE offers them the hybrid version as well.
Digital transformation requires a clear enterprise communication strategy, including the cloud, as well as mobile and big data to enable new business opportunities to deliver the digital experience that customers are seeking.
A hybrid communications strategy featuring services on premises, or in the cloud, can pave the way toward a digital experience with real-time communications at its cornerstone.
Overview
- ALE is using WebRTC technology, which makes its solutions vendor agnostic and browser based.
- ALE’s cloud solutions are based on scalability, databases, load balancers, proxy service, amongst others, with the idea to scale up to 500,000 concurrent users if required.
- Rainbow by Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise has become a complete, cloud-based platform providing multiple cloud services to more than a million users every day.
- ALE has relationships with hosting providers and less reliance on traditional hyper scalers and is using the European player OVH and IBM.
- Another reason why ALE is using the European player OVH is related to its sovereign cloud stamp.
- Rainbow by Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise is a CPaaS platform and provides APIs to build integration. Key integrations are with ServiceNow, Google, and Salesforce.
- The integration capabilities of ALE’s cloud solutions with a customer’s business processes continues to be a strong differentiator.
- Another important expectation from end customers of ALE’s cloud solutions is security and the confidentiality of their data.
While hyper scalers have enabled business applications to be accessed through cloud models, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise is now accelerating consumption of communication through its cloud services and partners.
