Paris, September 13, 2006 — Alcatel (Paris: CGEP.PA AND NYSE: ALA) today announced a new solution that brings carrier-grade, full-featured audio conferencing to users of Microsoft Office Communicator 2005. Alcatel’s My Teamwork for Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 enables enterprises worldwide to eliminate the recurring costs associated with third-party conferencing services while leveraging the Communicator 2005 client interface.
My Teamwork for Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 features many of the capabilities found in the native Alcatel My Teamwork offering including secure leader and participant access codes, roll call, lecture mode, dial-in and dial-out access, join tones, touchtone commands, and much more. Using Microsoft-supported APIs, the solution enables users to conduct both reservationless and scheduled conference calls - complete with call recording - from the Communicator 2005 software client. Powered by the SIP-to-the-core My Teamwork platform, the solution supports the Alcatel OmniPCX® Enterprise product line and other vendors’ IP- and TDM-based telephony platforms. My Teamwork for Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 can be deployed on the customer premise for large and small businesses alike, as a managed service, or within the carrier infrastructure, offering an immediate and hard ROI over the service-based audio conferencing solutions currently available today.
As a pure software solution that runs on commodity hardware servers, Alcatel’s My Teamwork for Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 guarantees enterprises investment protection by removing the initial and ongoing expenses associated with proprietary hardware-based products. With software-based licensing, upgrades and additional capacity are completed in minutes with no additional hardware required. Furthermore due to its flexible scalability, My Teamwork for Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 meets the needs of small businesses, very large enterprises, and service providers.
The initial release, available in 4Q06, will provide full integration with the Communicator 2005 conferencing features including participant mute, hang-up, and conference locking. Additionally, the solution offers a call-back function for bringing non-Communicator 2005 users into conference calls at the click of a mouse. Future releases of Alcatel’s My Teamwork will support the next-generation versions of Microsoft Office Communicator.
“Based on Alcatel’s strong partnership with Microsoft and global leadership position in the IP voice market place, we are confident that Microsoft’s enterprise customers will enjoy significant cost savings and ease-of-use benefits with Alcatel’s My Teamwork for Microsoft Office Communicator 2005,” said Jean-Christophe Giroux, President of Alcatel enterprise activities. “This complementary solution from Alcatel provides enterprise customers a complete conferencing solution with seamless integration at both the user interface and underlying software level.”
About Alcatel
Alcatel provides communications solutions to telecommunication carriers, Internet service providers and enterprises for delivery of voice, data and video applications to their customers or employees. Alcatel brings its leading position in fixed and mobile broadband networks, applications and services, to help its partners and customers build a user-centric broadband world. With sales of EURO 13.1 billion and 58,000 employees in 2005, Alcatel operates in more than 130 countries. For more information, visit Alcatel on the Internet:
http://www.alcatel.com