Barcelona, Spain. Alcatel-Lucent clearly sees software as the key to its comeback, and has made that clear with a slew of announcements at Mobile World Congress. The company is partnering with Intel for virtualized RAN, cloud platforms and packet processing for advanced IP/MPLS platforms, and it will deploy its CloudBand NFV solution in Telefonica’s network.
In discussing the Intel alliance with analysts, Alcatel-Lucent CTO Marcus Weldon scoffed at suggestions that established enterprise software players could threaten his company in the telecom software space. He also dismissed concerns about the impact that software sales will have on the company’s traditional hardware business.
All others are just pretenders
Weldon said that software-defined networking (SDN) requires a skill set and code base that takes years to establish, one which Alcatel-Lucent has been building through its router business.
“Fundamentally SDN done right is actually a distributed router,” said Weldon. “The way we built our SDN solution Nuage is actually taking router code base and connecting it to virtual switches … and instead of having a switch fabric inside the router it’s the data center fabric. So really to win in SDN you need a router code base. … Our movement into that space is premised on having a routing code base and not just premised on having a desire to be there. Routing code bases take 10 years to develop the robust feature set and performance you need, so for IP-scalalable, multi-tenant clouds there’s no way you can be in SDN and be global scale, carrier-grade, etc. without being router-code based so that’s our right to play in that space, and all others are just pretenders.”
A rising tide
Weldon acknowledged that as Alcatel-Lucent moves toward virtualized RAN, traditional hardware revenue could take a temporary hit. He said that despite that possibility, there will be no turning back.
“We’ve looked at this actually and it’s hard to say whether it comes out to a net positive in revenue, flat, maybe a slight decline but a higher margin. We are a bit unsure but we know we have to go there,” said Weldon. “And it’s not a massive change. It might be up, it might be down, but from what we see it’s more about value gain in the industry, and a rising tide floats all boats.”
“It’s not about average selling prices, it’s about expanding capacity,” Weldon explained. “That’s really how the conversation changed in the course of this year, to get it out of this cost savings argument. That’s sort of a declining momentum argument, because everyone wants to save costs, but it’s very poor motivator of big change. So the conversation now is about the elastic gain.”
