Alcatel-Lucent

By Christel Heydemann, VP Corporate Human Resources & Transformation, Alcatel-Lucent

I just returned from the World Economic Forum on Latin America in Mexico, as I was invited to attend the Young Global Leader event with an energizing group of 280 young leaders coming from 59 countries, with very diverse backgrounds in politics, business, arts, social entrepreneurs or civil society.

Several debates with young global leaders including the opening session with Klaus Schwab and the closing meeting with Presidente Calderon of Mexico indicated the dawn of a new era. The Human age or the new era of Talentism, in which access to talent is replacing capital as the key economic differentiator.

In his opening keynote to Young global leaders, Klaus Schwab refered to his blog “The end of capitalism…what’s next ?” and restated his conviction: “it is fair to say that capital is losing its status as the most important factor of production in our economic system. As I outlined in my opening address in Davos, capital is being superseded by creativity and the ability to innovate — and therefore by human talents — as the most important factors of production. If talent is becoming the decisive competitive factor, we can be confident in stating that capitalism is being replaced by “talentism.” Just as capital replaced manual trades during the process of industrialization, capital is now giving way to human talent.”

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Author’s grandfather, Lawrence A. Wagner, on an airfield in Santiago, Chile, 1931.

By John Fredette, Corporate Communications, Alcatel-Lucent.

Two weeks ago, while helping my mother move for the first time in 48 years, I came across some photos of her father. Lawrence “Sparks” Wagner was one of the first communications officers for Pan American Airlines. Radio communications fascinated him; in fact he had one of the very first radio sets in Baltimore, Maryland.  In the early 1930s in South America he had to carry a gun to protect against animals as he and his colleagues oversaw the clearing of jungle land for new air strips.  He knew seven languages and was learning Chinese for his upcoming post on PanAm’s China Clipper route when he was tragically killed in a plane crash at the Lima airport.

Based on stories from my grandmother I believe I know what type of person my grandfather was.  New technology fascinated him as did the idea of expanding frontiers.  He understood the risks, but he wanted to be part of the vanguard of pioneers who were creating a global network of international flight.  I am sure he would be amazed by how wireless communications have developed in the last 80 years.  I see a direct connection between what we are doing today in developing broadband wireless around the globe and what my grandfather’s industry was doing in the last century.

Certainly the physical dangers for the majority of us in telecommunications are very limited. But there are risks.  The risks are not necessarily for us as individuals but rather for our society and its organizations as we plough full speed ahead in developing and broadening the phenomenon referred to as ‘hyperconnectivity’.

Today, more people in more places have access to communications networks and are building (digital) links that are stronger and more prevalent than ever before in history.  Hyperconnectivity means always being easily connected by whatever device and wherever you are. It makes almost limitless amounts of data readily available. It is interactive and it is always keeping track of all those interactions.

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By Adolfo Hernandez, President of Alcatel-Lucent’s software, services and solutions division.

Today’s web and app-driven world has awakened newfound interest in the role the network plays in the future of technology. In this post, we’ll look at the reasons driving that interest and how what was traditionally a hardware-dominated industry is evolving to one that is more software-centric.

It’s what’s inside that counts. That’s where true beauty lives. Your parents knew it. Your teachers knew it. Heck, even Intel knew it. And, slowly but surely, the telecom industry is realizing it as video drives changes in the network.

That inside beauty of the network is software.

To build a more intelligent network – one that requires moving, dispatching, allocating and caching video to new and different devices – requires software. Software is the tool we use to ensure caching is done efficiently, to ensure transactions are processed, to code the APIs to enable us to expose elements of the network, to deal with things like advanced communications, charging and analytics.

Yet, this is certainly not the traditional software most people would think, not even in the back office or IT processing of an enterprise. The software to make the network intelligent must be telco-grade software able to operate in the hallowed five-nines environment. It must have absolute integrity and reliability. But it also must possess the latest and greatest technologies, be build on community-driven development models, implement the right industry standards, and be built on a flexible, cloud-aware architecture.

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Marie Thérèse Royce, Senior Director International Public Affairs for the Americas

By Marie Thérèse Royce, Senior Director International Public Affairs for the Americas. Marie was in Haiti following the earthquake and provides us here with an  update about a new submarine cable which will accelerate Haiti’s recovery and growth.

I was working 400 miles away from Haiti, the day of the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that caused significant damage and loss of life more than two years ago.  As the weeks passed, I was invited to be a part of a delegation, convened and hosted by the U.S. Chamber’s Business Civic Leadership Center (BCLC), who met with leaders from the Haitian government and leading NGOs during a trip to earthquake-ravaged Haiti.  I represented Alcatel-Lucent to Haiti as part of the delegation. Our group of companies worked to gain a better understanding of the Haitian leadership’s redevelopment priorities and sought to engage in long-term recovery activities such as in-country relationship building and international volunteerism.

It became clear that access to information and communication networks is now an essential part of the basic infrastructure needed for socio-economic development. After the recovery, the country was an illustration that ICTs are nearly as important as access to clean water and transportation.

Alcatel-Lucent is now giving the country a further boost by installing an undersea cable which will connect it to the global economy through broadband services.

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Participants to the closing panel of the BASD RIO+20 preparation event

By Philippe Richard, VP Bell Labs in charge of green strategy.

Last week in the Hague, a Rio+20 sustainable development conference exposed need for ICT’s enablement potential to be heard. Further to this, it is clear that long-term results need to allow for technology investments that yield OPEX savings, versus short term CAPEX deals.

The key points were:

• During this Rio +20 business consultation, ICT’s role as an enabler for low carbon economy across industries was incorporated into the conference agenda at the last minute. While ICTs were mentioned in the opening statements, the role and value of ICTs were not clearly identified until the end.
• As a member of the closing panel, “Road to Rio and beyond”, I offered examples of how Alcatel-Lucent’s ICT solutions contribute towards the much needed, low-carbon economy, including perspectives relative to national energy consumption patterns, how GreenTouch™ illustrates a successful co-creative platform and how, ultimately access to broadband must be a top public policy priority for inclusive global sustainability.
• The overriding theme was the need for business to work with policy makers and how regulation was needed to improve efficiency of the world economy.
• I stressed the fact that ICT is a mandatory enabler if we want to succeed in time. This also requires ICT to be more and more efficient as it has to be more and more ubiquitous (internet of things, cloud, etc.).
• You can read the BASD closing panel summary (PDF) or see my presentation (Slideshare)

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