PARIS and PLEASANTON, Calif. -- Alcatel (Paris: CGEP.PA and NYSE: ALA) and Polycom®, Inc. (NASDAQ: PLCM) today announced a strategic partner agreement to deliver converged collaboration solutions to enterprises. Bringing together Polycom's leading video conferencing systems with Alcatel's award-winning unified communications offering, the multi-year partnership will focus on delivering enterprise users integrated collaboration solutions that span voice, video and Web conferencing.

Leveraging presence and real-time control across the PC desktop and telephone, the joint solution enables enterprise users to instantly connect with people and workgroups through an instant messaging client or via the telephone to launch rich media collaboration sessions that include video. Users will be able to escalate from one form of communication to another with just one touch, adding video to an Alcatel phone call or audio and video to an instant message.

"Unified communications solutions have the potential to significantly alter and improve the way individuals, groups and companies interact and perform," said Gartner Vice President Bern Elliot. "The convergence of voice, Web and video conferencing and collaboration represents a key building block for delivering a complete solution, contributing to better integration of communications channels and business processes."

Delivering one of the industry's first end-to-end video conferencing solutions that leverages Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), the joint solution resulting from this partnership will integrate Polycom's industry-leading PVX and VSX video conferencing and collaboration systems and MGC multipoint bridges with the Alcatel OmniPCX Enterprise IP communications platform, the award-winning Alcatel IP Touch phones, and the Alcatel My Teamwork collaboration application, which is part of Alcatel's integrated unified communications software suite. The integrated solution will also tie the desktop into Polycom's group video conferencing systems in conference rooms both within and among companies for a seamless integration of applications and devices, enabling users to instantly add video to existing IM sessions and telephony calls. Network administrators will be able to remotely deploy, provision and manage the integrated environments through a unified dial plan and directory services.

"Alcatel is committed to delivering SIP-based collaboration solutions to enterprise users, enabling them to instantly initiate rich media sessions regardless of the device they are using and regardless of their location," said Jean-Luc Fourniou, senior vice president, Alcatel enterprise solutions activities. "Partnering with Polycom supports our strategy to deliver video as part of our converged collaboration solutions, improving both individual and workgroup productivity for enterprises."

"At Polycom we believe delivering the ultimate communications experience to remote and dispersed workgroups is a strategic advantage for organizations," said Hans Schwarz, senior vice president and chief systems architect at Polycom. "Partnering with Alcatel ensures we can integrate that experience not only into a leading IP PBX environment, but also into the feature-rich Alcatel unified communication solution. The co-development in SIP we do with Alcatel will bring new levels of integration to phones, PCs and conference rooms everywhere, delivering enterprise users with the ultimate rich media communications experience."

Polycom Inc.

Alcatel