Alcatel-Lucent and Red Hat will integrate Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Realtime technologies in Alcatel-Lucent communication products for small and medium enterprises (SME). The collaboration supports Alcatel-Lucent's Dynamic Enterprise commitment to interconnecting people, networks, process and knowledge in a flexible, open environment while helping Red Hat expand its business.

The evolution toward Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Realtime technology, a major component of the announced Red Hat MRG, will enable Alcatel-Lucent to further strengthen reliability, scalability, security and stability throughout the lifecycle of its SME portfolio of voice, data, mobility and collaboration products. Alcatel-Lucent will benefit from Red Hat's hardware certification program on its next-generation hardware platforms, and from Red Hat's extended support cycles including security updates.

"The selection of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Realtime technologies for our SME portfolio is the obvious choice for Alcatel-Lucent," said Tom Burns, Chief Operating Officer of Alcatel-Lucent's enterprise activities. "By relying on the market leader in open source software and services for our operating system and middleware needs, we can focus our development efforts on delivering innovative ways for fixed and mobile users to communicate and interact with each other -- any where, any time, over any access and any device."

"We are excited to expand our relationship with Alcatel-Lucent into the SME segment," said Paul Cormier, executive vice president of Engineering at Red Hat. "Not only does this show that Red Hat Enterprise Linux is an ideal platform for the SME sector, but it also demonstrates that Red Hat's technology is well suited to handle mission-critical applications such as realtime enterprise communications."

Alcatel-Lucent builds solutions that transform the way small and medium enterprises communicate by delivering fully integrated communication, collaboration and mobility solutions that are scalable, reliable and cost- effective. The Alcatel-Lucent SME portfolio features the OmniPCX Office family of IP-PBX systems and the Extended Communication Server family of collaboration and unified communication servers, all of which are based on Linux distributions.