Announced at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2014 in Barcelona, the partnership with Intel is designed to help carriers worldwide to improve time to market and operational efficiency.
“In the last year we have seen an acceleration of innovation and industry changes,” said Michel Combes, CEO at Alcatel-Lucent.
“This is nothing compared to what we will see in the next decades, bringing new possibilities to our digital lifestyles.”
The French vendor and the US chip maker share a long-standing relationship in the virtualisation space and the deal will see the two companies focus on three key areas: virtualised RANs, cloud platform and packet processing for advanced IP/MPLS platforms.
Alcatel-Lucent will develop these platforms with Intel architecture, in a bid to deliver crucial technology hoped to drive the industry forward.
“Intel is working with industry leaders such as Alcatel-Lucent to leverage server and virtualisation technology in telecoms networks, data centres and the cloud, with the goal of reducing costs and making it easier to deploy new services,” said Renee James, president of Intel Corporation.
Also at MWC 2014, Alcatel-Lucent announced a partnership with Spanish operator Telefónica to drive the innovation and adoption of network functions virtualisation (NFV) in the telecoms industry.
The French vendor will use its CloudBand platform to identify which network elements should be virtualised, and when.
Telefónica also shares a long history with Alcatel-Lucent and Enrique Blanco, Global CTO at Telefónica, said: “I am confident that what we achieve over the course of the next year in the realm of virtualisation will have major benefits for our two companies and the industry as a whole.”
Earlier this month, Alcatel-Lucent partnered with China Mobile to develop its NFV solution.
