Alcatel-Lucent, Tuesday launched Rapport, a software-based open communications and collaboration platform for large enterprises and service providers. Rapport is designed to enable new ‘contextual communications’, where fundamental services such as voice, chat, video conferencing and sharing become functions available to any application, website or connected object. These services can then be accessed by application developers using open application programming interfaces (APIs) and simple software development kits (SDKs).
According to Alcatel-Lucent, Rapport is based on a fully re-architected version of Alcatel-Lucent’s IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) software. Rapport strengthens the communications business case for service providers by enabling them to support VoLTE/mobile, fixed, and WiFi services with a single, more agile cloud communications platform, significantly simplifying and reducing the cost per subscriber to deliver these services. Rapport uses a network functions virtualization (NFV) approach, and works with NFV platforms such as Alcatel-Lucent’s CloudBand™ to launch VoLTE and new services rapidly to both consumers and businesses and scale dynamically as subscriber demand dictates. Service providers can embed communications into objects, applications and websites, which opens up new retail markets such as wearables, connected homes and telematics. They can also extend services from their single Rapport network to application providers and web companies to pursue new wholesale markets.
Bhaskar Gorti, President, IP Platforms Business, Alcatel-Lucent
Rapport liberates large enterprises from the communications technology silos and proprietary vendor offerings that IT departments need to contend with. It also removes the barriers for service providers to offer more engaging communications services to their customers, which can be delivered seamlessly using any device and across any network.
