Alcatel-Lucent Ties Up Sphinx

PARIS -- Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU)today announced that it has expanded its UK channel coverage with the signing of a distribution deal with Sphinx, one of the UK’s foremost independent distributors. This deal forms a central part of Alcatel-Lucent’s new strategy to significantly extend its UK channels coverage through the recruitment of leading channel partners. Sphinx will distribute Alcatel-Lucent’s enterprise voice solutions to its own data resellers and also to new and existing Alcatel-Lucent voice resellers with an ultimate goal of providing end users in the UK with a viable alternative for voice and data infrastructure solutions.

While offering a full portfolio of complementary IT products, Sphinx will not carry any competitive products to Alcatel-Lucent’s enterprise voice solutions. This focus will enable Sphinx to deliver superior marketing initiatives, training programs, and technical support, all of which will help resellers to improve their enterprise offerings and boost their revenues. A dedicated team has also been set up within Sphinx to assist Alcatel-Lucent resellers with business development activities as well as with pre- and post-sales technical support.

By supplying Alcatel-Lucent’s complete portfolio of enterprise IP telephony solutions -- including the Alcatel-Lucent OmniPCX Enterprise, designed for large enterprises, and the Alcatel-Lucent OmniPCX Office, optimized for small-to-medium sized businesses -- Sphinx is intent on offering customers the ability to choose the solutions from the marketplace that best fit their needs. Sphinx will also offer Alcatel-Lucent’s range of contact center solutions and unified communication applications.

“We are very enthusiastic about the signing of this agreement with Sphinx. It is a highly strategic move for the new Alcatel-Lucent in the UK; the current UK IP telephony market is widely predicted to grow, so it’s vital we have a distribution partner that is focused on helping resellers deliver solutions that provide true value and choice to end users while closing more deals,” said Graeme Allan, for Alcatel-Lucent enterprise activities in UK and Ireland. “Sphinx’s commitment to Alcatel-Lucent as its sole voice vendor is key to the expansion of our UK channel operations. While multi-vendor distributors have little or no incentive to promote competing solutions to the same reseller, Sphinx has no split loyalties, and will champion Alcatel-Lucent solutions to all voice resellers.”

Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU)