Longtime Oracle Communications executive Bhaskar Gorti has joined Alcatel-Lucent as the head of IP Platforms and takes responsibility for NFV.

January 13, 2015

2 Min Read
AlcaLu Hires Oracle Big Hitter

Alcatel-Lucent announced a significant appointment late Monday, announcing that longtime Oracle Communications executive Bhaskar Gorti is its new President of IP Platforms, filling a seat previously kept warm by Andrew McDonald.

In his new job, Gorti will take responsibility for the Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) business units that specialize in cloud, NFV, OSS, policy management and charging, customer experience management and security. He will report directly to CEO Michel Combes.

Gorti has extensive experience in the service provider IT (SPIT) sector, having been senior VP and general manager of Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL)'s Communications Global Business Unit since 2006, when he joined the IT giant as part of the acquisition of Portal Software. (See Oracle Acquires Portal.)

Find out more about Gorti and his views of the communications sector in Light Reading's extensive interview with him. (See Confessions of an Oracle Shopaholic: Pt I and Confessions of an Oracle Shopaholic: Pt II.)

Gorti's time at Oracle not only makes him a very experienced OSS and BSS executive, but also gives him some early insights into network functions virtualization (NFV): The emerging importance of NFV was one of the key drivers behind Oracle's acquisitions of Acme Packet and Tekelec in 2013. (See Oracle Snaps Up Tekelec and Is Acme a Virtual Gain for Oracle?)

Figure 1: Alcatel-Lucent's new President IP Platforms, Bhaskar Gorti, who has NFV as part of his new responsibilities. Alcatel-Lucent's new President IP Platforms, Bhaskar Gorti, who has NFV as part of his new responsibilities.

The appointment is also another signal that AlcaLu is getting back on its feet after a tough few years, and that it is pushing ahead further with its Shift Plan, which has IP at its heart. (See Interview: Alcatel-Lucent CEO Michel Combes and Alcatel-Lucent Builds Future Around IP.)

The big question is: Exactly how will Gorti's role fit alongside that of Basil Alwan, Alcatel-Lucent's king of IP? As the vendor virtualizes more and more of its portfolio, exactly which of these two executives will be driving the virtualization and cloud strategy, including the direction of AlcaLu's CloudBand unit (which also has a new lead executive)? (See Alcatel-Lucent Joins Virtual Router Race, Basil Alwan Interview: The Road to Cloud and AlcaLu Losing Key NFV Exec.)

We have questions in to Alcatel-Lucent about this and the fate of McDonald.

The role of President IP Platforms is not a new one at AlcaLu, but it looks like it's about to become a whole lot more interesting.

— Ray Le Maistre, Circle me on Google+Follow me on TwitterVisit my LinkedIn profile, Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading

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