infoTECH Feature

August 01, 2014

Alcatel-Lucent Tools Give iSoftStone an Edge in Business Focused Infrastructure

When it comes to business, the infrastructure can never be ignored. Should the infrastructure ever fail, the business might well go with it. So when an opportunity emerges to improve the infrastructure—as Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert) recently could offer to Chinese IT service provider iSoftStone—it became clear that taking advantage of said opportunities offers short- and long-term ramifications.

The iSoftStone project began when the company realized it needed a better class of network for the corporate headquarters' data center, specifically, a network that could support a private cloud infrastructure that itself would be driving over 20 different branches throughout the entire world. The new data center and contact center needed to be easily integrated, and any new solutions brought into play had to work—and work readily—with everything that was already in place. No small order, but that was when iSoftStone turned to Alcatel-Lucent, who had just the solution in mind. Better yet, it would take less than a year to go from the deal being won to the solutions being implemented.

Alcatel-Lucent brought in a combination of its OmniPCX Enterprise Communication Server and its OmniSwitch 10K Modular LAN Chassis to handle the job, and the results were felt fairly quickly. Despite the fact that the service would have over 17,000 users involved, the use of Alcatel-Lucent's solution lowered total cost of operations, and provided not only a faster overall pace to the organization's move to the private cloud, but also offered a faster return on investment, a proposition that's always carefully watched with any business. There were also improvements to operational efficiency and total availability, which for services like those offered by iSoftStone, is always extremely valuable.

The IT director for iSoftStone, Wang Xiaodong, offered up some commentary after the system was put in place, saying “We are very happy to be using the converged solution from Alcatel-Lucent for business focused infrastructure (i.e., campus network, voice communication, private cloud, etc.) which helped us improve the operational efficiency of our employees and achieve business growth agilely.”

What this deal clearly demonstrates is the kind of value an augmented infrastructure can offer. Since there was a reduced total cost of operations and improved operational efficiency as well, it becomes safe to suggest that iSoftStone experienced reduced costs as well, or could route some of its staff in other directions to gain better utility and potentially offer more services for the same rate of expense. These are both points that are extremely helpful to business, and under the right conditions, augment profitability as well, especially over the long term. While iSoftStone might have been able to reach that level of profitability without Alcatel-Lucent's augmentations, it's clear that the improvements in question allowed those results to be achieved much more rapidly, which means same are likely to be greater in the long run. A Brazilian conglomerate, Grupo JMallucelli, recently saw some impressive results of its own when turning to Alcatel-Lucent for solutions in improving reliability for its phone service. We have video on this and many other subjects available at this link.

Will this work for everyone? Not necessarily; after all, every business' circumstances are different. But with careful consideration of the infrastructure and the realization of where it can be improved, the chances of operational improvements and cost reductions become a clear and present possibility. Such has been clearly demonstrated by the successes of firms like Grupo JMallucelli, and now, iSoftStone.




Edited by Maurice Nagle
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