Video: 10 Minute IT Jams - An update from Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise

Digital transformation for business is accelerating. Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (ALE), a longstanding global ICT vendor, is pushing innovation and security for customers across Australia, New Zealand, and the wider Asia-Pacific region.

Speaking with the company's regional leaders, it's clear that ALE is making significant inroads into mission-critical sectors, with tailored networking, communications, and cloud solutions underpinning their approach. "We are known for our networking and communication solutions," said Ilia Goodlan, Vice President, APAC. "We deliver those predominantly to the enterprise and government markets."

Central to ALE's strategy is a commitment to delivering "highly secure, highly robust and versatile" technology. Goodlan continued, "We really focus on mission-critical solutions that are highly secure and robust. We sell them into those industries that need them the most - predominantly public healthcare, areas of government, energy and utilities, transportation."

The company's indirect business model also sets it apart. Rather than selling directly, ALE works exclusively with partners. "What is very important is that we do not have a direct go to market," Goodlan explained. "We always sell with and through our partner community."

This community-first approach extends to how ALE delivers its offerings. From local area networks and Wi-Fi to advanced SD-WAN solutions and mission-critical telephony, ALE provides its technologies as on-premises, cloud, or hybrid services. This flexibility is designed to address the needs of sectors that cannot afford downtime or security lapses.

Recently, ALE has seen "success with its network and cloud business in Australia and New Zealand", particularly with its private cloud offering. As Goodlan described, changing perceptions of the public cloud's reliability and security are drawing customers to more controlled environments. "Cloud is a very hot topic. The transition to cloud is a big thing," he said. "Customers are realising that cloud sometimes is not giving as much uptime, security, or liability as they need. That's why we see partners and customers coming to us for more secure and protected environments."

He elaborated, "We get a lot of interest around our private cloud solutions where we can build a full secure cloud environment dedicated for a certain customer or a certain group of customers. That's where we get a lot of interest in the cloud environment."

Wireless innovation is another area of focus. According to Goodlan, "It's all about what kind of things or persons are coming onto the network, how you analyse that, and how you manage it." ALE's Wi-Fi solution departs from traditional controller-based networks, instead favouring "a distributed, or mesh architecture," which Goodlan believes "is the future of Wi-Fi."

Speed, efficiency, and security remain the watchwords for their networking portfolios. "The focus there is really about the speeds and the feeds obviously always going up, but also how you really build very efficient, high capacity and, again, very protected secure environments," Goodlan added.

Looking ahead, ALE's product development teams are concentrating on artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT). "Artificial intelligence has been in the news over the past few months because of ChatGPT," said Goodlan. "Artificial intelligence per se and business has been around for at least 10-15 years in various forms and shapes. In order to do anything with artificial intelligence, you obviously need data and a way to get that data is IoT."

ADE Goodlan emphasised ALE's long-standing efforts to ensure their devices are "IoT ready ... not only for the present network of devices but also anything that can be put onto the network in the future years."

Giving context to this focus, Goodlan described how vertical specialisation guides technology development: "For us, development cannot be removed from the verticals that we're working in. We work across five different verticals - hospitality and transport, government, healthcare, education. Every one of them has a different use case for IoT devices and that's what we really try to work on."

This approach appears to be bearing fruit, with Goodlan noting, "Last year, the region grew by more than 40 percent."

Within Asia-Pacific, ALE's presence is anchored by strong teams in Australia, India, Singapore, Indonesia, and Korea, but also extends to Japan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Thailand. "The main focus is really into the large markets, Australia obviously being one of them," Goodlan said, highlighting the company's commitment to building local capacity and knowledge.

Asked how enterprise users and partners could engage with ALE, Goodlan advised, "If they're in the Australian or New Zealand region, I would suggest people reach out to me. We'd be very happy to connect with partners and customers and make sure we follow up with them. In the end, we work locally with our teams and together with our partners, so at some point we will definitely get partners involved as well."

For ALE, digital transformation is not simply about new technology but about delivering reliability, security, and tailored solutions for those who need it most. As Goodlan concluded, "We really try to work on the use cases that matter to our customers. Every one of them has a different need – and that's what sets us apart."