For the 19th year, Alcatel-Lucent has gathered its enterprise customers (as well as partners, consultants, analysts and press) in Paris to meet and greet, as well as learn about and see demos of the company's latest and greatest solutions. While the state of the economy has impacted the attendance at many industry events, and those planned for the rest of 2009, ALU was proud to announce that with 6,700 registered attendees this is the largest Forum ever.There were briefing sessions for various groups on Tuesday but the official opening of Forum was the keynote address by CEO Ben Verwaayen. One of Ben's messages was that the digital economy can be part of the solution to not only the current financial crisis but also to climate change.
The idea is not as far fetched as it may at first appear. In several different meetings over the past few days, it has been proposed that the stimulus packages being proposed and funded throughout the world can be an opportunity for the communications market. Not just in the US, but throughout the world, governments are earmarking stimulus dollars for projects in specific verticals, for example transportation, energy, defense and so-called smart communities.
As a life-long Democrat, even I would never go so far as to say we can spend our way out of this recession (though others, namely the UK's Gordon Brown have said it). What Alcatel-Lucent was saying is that they recognize the opportunities that such funding could have for its business, especially as they have long marketed their enterprise solutions to some of these very same verticals.
One of Verwaayen's final comments was that Alcatel-Lucent will proceed in these uncertain times with confidence and certainty, that companies can do business with them can know that they are here for the long haul. He used a phrase, "A man, a man, a word, a word" that I had not heard before. Not surprisingly it seems to be of Dutch origin and means "gentlemen's agreement." The philosophy is that companies can trust Alcatel-Lucent to do what they say they will do and deliver what they promise. And that is certainly a great place to start any dialogue.
