Alcatel-Lucent is consolidating its 25 data centres worldwide into six locations by the end of 2009. The Marcoussis centre is the showcase for the company's consolidation project and is a demonstration of how Alcatel-Lucent's data centre operations are being transformed into business-driven assets for generating new revenue streams.

The new data centre supports Alcatel-Lucent's growing and dynamic businesses with an infrastructure built on its own award-winning OmniSwitch networking products and HP's industry-standard servers. The centre is designed to handle increasing volumes of multimedia content, automated business processes and new application and service business models.

In addition, surplus capacity will be leased to other companies through Data IV, the company's joint venture with Colony Capital, to further reduce the total cost of ownership of the data centre for Alcatel-Lucent.

To ensure the success of the data centre migration project at Marcoussis, Alcatel-Lucent turned to HP Services, the fourth largest technology services organisation in the world. HP Services designed and implemented the redundant architecture to enable data replication, provide continuous availability and enhance systems security.

It also provided a comprehensive thermal assessment, including 3D model analysis, to optimize power usage. HP consultants assisted Alcatel-Lucent in planning and conducting the relocation of 850 servers from Alcatel-Lucent's legacy data centres to Marcoussis.

"The forward-thinking planning, architecture and design of the Marcoussis data centre meets our business requirements today and offers scalability to grow as our business evolves", stated Elizabeth Hackenson, senior vice president and chief information officer, Alcatel-Lucent. "The centre is an important addition to the European technology ecosystem and helps set Alcatel-Lucent apart in the market."

Alcatel-Lucent expects the data centre consolidation project to reduce the total cost of data centre operations by 25 percent before the end of 2008.

"HP teamed with Alcatel-Lucent to turn technology into a source of business and competitive advantage", stated Ann Livermore, executive vice president, Technology Solutions Group, HP. "HP helps customers manage and transform their data centres from cost centres into strategic business enablers."

Designed to provide extremely high availability and withstand any single outage as well as multiple disastrous events, the Marcoussis center houses Alcatel-Lucent's mission-critical applications. It is a showcase of Alcatel-Lucent technology with nearly 250 unique devices implemented, including OmniSwitch Ethernet IP networking, 7670 WAN switching and routing solutions, and security. The new data centre puts into reality Alcatel-Lucent's dynamic enterprise concept driven by strengthened relationships, simplified communications and results.

The data centre will serve as the primary network operating centre to support Alcatel-Lucent's growing application businesses and its Services Business Group, which supports some of the world's largest telecom service providers.