Alcatel-Lucent announced upgrades to its core SMB portfolio with the release of Office Communications Solutions 2008. With an emphasis on open source support, the release has been "designed from the ground-up for the SMB market" according to the company, and it is supported by a dedicated SMB channel program.

In a prepared statement, Jeremy Ryan, Director at The Comms Company said, “With Alcatel-Lucent Office Communication Solutions, business partners have direct access to a complete voice, data and applications portfolio with a unique one-stop-shopping experience, minimizing the investment and training needed to distribute the complete offer. Customers see us less as suppliers of ‘phones on desks’ and more as trusted business partners in the converged space.”

Office Communication Solutions 2008 includes:

• OmniSwitch 6400 Stackable LAN Switch which features Gigabit and Layer 2+ switching.
• Alcatel-Lucent 8-Series Extended Edition phones with Gigabit and enhanced SIP support.
• Alcatel-Lucent’s Extended Communication Server with new push mail to synchronize smartphone mail, contact, task and calendar content over-the-air, along with embedded faxing.
• One number services with any device and with two clients for Smartphones (Alcatel-Lucent Cellular Extension for Windows Mobile and Intellisync Call Connect for Nokia eSeries).

In support of open source development, Alcatel-Lucent has included real time voice integration with business processes with an XML applications framework within the Extended Communication Server (ECS). Third party integrations to date include Innovative e-commerce, or CRM based on SugarCRM and open source packages based upon Drupal to deliver a Web2.0 interactive collaboration platform for integration in the SMB.

Our comments: While partnerships between large companies to further development get a lot of press coverage (including many editions of this newsletter), we think opening up an SMB platform to third party developers especially makes sense for the SMB market because it creates an opportunity for cost-effective customization in smaller businesses that may have escaped notice of the tier one suppliers. Using open source and standards-based applications frameworks like XML make it easier (and hopefully cheaper) for the SMB market to enjoy the benefits of business process integration with their communications systems.

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Larry Hettick is a principal analyst at Current Analysis.