Alcatel-Lucent has introduced a collaboration platform, the Extended Communication Server, for small and medium businesses in Africa, Middle East and India, providing new features such as push mobile and fax server solutions.
Part of the Alcatel-Lucent Office portfolio, the Extended Communication Server (ECS) family and OmniPCX Office family of IP-PBX systems are claimed to deliver collaboration and unified communication solutions to the needs of small and medium businesses (SMBs).
According to the company, the push mobile feature within Extended ECS lets employees retrieve emails, calendar, contacts and tasks on-the-fly and in real-time on their mobile devices. Push mobile offers a secure, flexible, easy to deploy provider independent solution without the need for specific subscription, where data carrier services are the only requirement.
The Extended Communication Server is claimed to allow integration of any open source professional web application by integrating an XML API framework as well as a standard LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl, Python, PHP) environment into the solution. This open integration enables small businesses to transform to a communications model that strengthens relationships with their customers, simplifies interaction and improves performance in their business.
Jan Zuurbier, vice president of sales and support for emerging markets at Alcatel-Lucent, said: With the ECS, we help businesses to connect their people and processes for real productivity gains, with overnight cost savings. Time, resources, and budgets are limited, and the Extended Communication Server allows small businesses to do more, and at a competitive price point.
