CMO details Alcatel-Lucent's strategy, future vision

On content delivery networks (CDNs): CDNs out there today stop at the edge of the backbone of the network. The most effective content delivery networks will go all the way into the consumer home. Maybe even as far out as the handset. CDN permeates the whole value proposition of a network...I don’t necessarily see us getting into the business of owning and operating a CDN. So we might partner with somebody who does it to help a service provider get the job done.

On IMS: It’s a strategic to us because IMS is at the heart of this move by customers. You wouldn’t deploy an IMS network because inherently you need an IMS network. But if you deploy a new kind of service, in order for it to be very flexible and competitive and able to be integrated with other kinds of services, you’d be crazy not to use IMS technology to do it. It’s a great set of standards around real-time communications. And you can start to mash up and blend services once you deploy it. If we put in an IMS architecture and then we put in a Web-enabled platform on top and expose those capabilities to the rest of the world, the consumption of those services might not make us all rich on IMS revenue. But it’s going to consume a heck of a lot of network resources.

On Verwaayen promising a more ‘disruptive’ role for Bell Labs: Disruption is only bad for you if someone else causes it, not if you cause it. Either figure out how to put yourself out of business or someone else will. We need Bell Labs pushing us. Lines of business exist in order to survive; they have a tendency not to look for new things. [Verwaayen] is pushing Bell Labs to come right up next to our businesses and be in charge of looking for disruptions -- business models or technologies or anything else -- and when they see them, smack our businesses over the head and tell them to pay attention. And turn them into products. There’s fundamental science research going on at Bell Labs; it’s not like 50 years ago, but there’s lots of innovation. At our [recent] innovation day, there was a demo of a phone [for which] you didn’t have to make a noise -- just mouth the words, and it can translate the vibrations coming off your face into the words. Extraordinary stuff. It’s a couple years away. That’s the kind of stuff they’re working on.