Alcatel-Lucent launches BiCS in the Middle East

The announcement took take place during a customer event that was held in one of Alcatel-Lucent most prestigious references, the Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi.

BiCS is a multi-service communications system for mid-sized enterprises with 100-500 employees. With easy upgradeability, the system is ideal to meet mid-sized enterprises' growing communications needs without a need for additional hardware.

The all in one solution simplifies the path to advanced communications by integrating innovative new technologies including Unified Communications, integrated management applications, and contact center capabilities to meet employees' needs. Through the "user profile" approach, business partners can deliver a flexible, all-in-one server solution that brings the network, people, processes and knowledge together in a real-time business environment for greater employee productivity and customer satisfaction.

Furthermore, with "pay as you grow" and "try before you buy" facilities, BiCS offers real communication flexibility to mid-sized companies. BiCS leverages a comprehensive set of integration tools, a single wizard installation tool, and a virtualization layer allowing all applications to share the same hardware server.

"Employees at mid-sized enterprises need instant access to information and people that our communications tools deliver. However, those tools need to be affordable and scalable. BiCS delivers advanced communication applications easily and cost-effectively, enabling mid-size enterprises to give employees and customers the access to resources and information they need to be successful,"

said Gabriel Karam, Head of Marketing & Business Development for Middle East & India.

"The 100- to 500-employee mid-size enterprise is a booming segment specifically in Middle East region and is one of Alcatel-Lucent's major targets as it represents a high growth potential over the next five years. Their needs are similar to the large enterprises and often include collaboration, mobility solutions and serving multi-sites, though they often lack dedicated experienced resources," says Hesham El Nahhas, Regional Director Enterprise Middle East. "BiCS is the offer we have been missing to meet the needs of this growing segment. It is complete, easy and simplifies the sales and post sales process and customer ability to acquire the solution rapidly."

Besides BiCS, the launching event featured presentations on "My Instant Communicator", the world's first integrated, multi-media, multi-session, multi-device unified communications client solution. It also included a brief on "The Dynamic Enterprise". A Dynamic Enterprise is where Enterprise 2.0 applications and Alcatel-Lucent's secure, always-on communication technologies strengthen business relationships, simplify communications, and improve enterprise performance.

Through innovative offerings like BiCS and My Instant Communicator, Alcatel-Lucent helps Dynamic Enterprises worldwide to leverage the powerful collective knowledge generated in the Web 2.0 world by integrating the companies' networks, people and processes in real time to provide competitive differentiation.