Acquisition Expands the Hosted Contact Center Solution Portfolio for Leading Provider of Customer Service Software

San Francisco, January 22, 2009- Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, an Alcatel-Lucent company (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU), today announced it has acquired SDE Software Development Engineering GmbH (“SDE”). SDE’s primary product, called Genesys Customer Interaction Portal, is a web-based thin client software solution that helps service providers deliver hosted contact center capabilities, such as self-service and agent-assisted service, to enterprise customers. The customer interaction portal is a key component in Genesys’ hosted contact center solution strategy.

With the acquisition of SDE, Genesys acquires the Genesys Customer Interaction Portal (GCIP) product, all associated intellectual property and the intact SDE development team. The company is a privately held limited liability company organized under the laws of Germany and was formerly part of VoicInt Telecommunications, GmbH.

“Customer service software needs to support the Anywhere Enterprise,” said Sheryl Kingstone, Director of the Yankee Group's Customer-Centric Strategies service. “Contact centers are not just located in a single location today, and the technology needs to reflect that. In addition, for service providers to expand their offerings, they cannot be limited to premise-based offerings. Portals are a critical need and we are seeing the rise of software as a service because virtualization and choice of deployment is becoming so important.”

This acquisition benefits both service providers who deliver hosted services and enterprises as service providers seek to create new product offerings that deliver high value to enterprise customers. GCIP addresses the common roadblocks to service delivery, including the complexity and time it takes a service provider to package, deploy and maintain multiple service offerings to multiple customers. GCIP was designed with both service providers and their enterprise customers in mind. For service providers, it supports the notion of ‘products’ and makes it easier to create and package solutions for multiple customers. Enterprises often need multi-tenant provisioning and flexible application control capabilities, and gain simplified access to, and increased control of their contact centers through GCIP’s anywhere-based web portal. By increasing the efficiency to create new offerings, GCIP provides higher profit margins and more lucrative business models for the hosted contact center services market.

“Forward-looking service providers recognize that enterprise users have high demands for both control and flexibility in their hosted customer service solutions such as call centers. Adding SDE to Genesys sustains the total solution that delivers this agility and level of control, and helps us deliver on the promise of enabling service providers to create innovative, profitable products to sell to their customers, which is one of the key values in forming the Alcatel-Lucent Application Software Group” said Nicolas De Kouchkovsky, President of Genesys.

Peter Nowack, Managing Director of VoicInt, said: “Genesys is a natural fit to acquire the GCIP technology through our SDE spin-off. The fact that the engineering team will now work for Genesys is testament to the world class skill set, engineering best practices and ability to deliver that we consider hallmarks of our operation.”

The financial terms of this cash transaction are not being disclosed and do not have a material impact on Alcatel-Lucent.

About VoicInt Telecommunications GmbH. and SDE
SDE is a spinoff from VoicInt, a global provider of unified contact center solutions, specializing in deployments of Genesys CTI environments whose common, standards-based software platform gives organizations comprehensive, enterprise-wide functionality that helps them succeed by maximizing productivity and providing the most effective customer service. The company has pioneered Genesys complimentary standard solutions for large and x-large enterprise customers. With VoicInt's GAdvance Suite contact center operators grasp the capabilities of their business and achieve sustainable increases in productivity through integrated holistic process management. The company is an established OEM supplier to Genesys and has recently spun off its successful carrier class provisioning solution paving the way to refocus it's entire engineering workforce on the further evolution of the GAdvance product portfolio. VoicInt customers represent a wide range of brand-name DAX 30 companies. For more information, go to http://www.voicint.com. 

About Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc.
Genesys, an Alcatel-Lucent company, is the only company that focuses 100% on software to manage customer interactions over the phone, web and in e-mail. The Genesys software suite dynamically connects customers with the right resources – self-service or assisted-service – to fulfill customer requests, optimize customer care goals and efficiently use resources. Genesys software directs more than 100 million customer interactions every day for 4,000 companies and government agencies in 80 countries. These companies and agencies can leverage their entire organization, from the contact center to the back office, to improve the overall customer experience. As a result, Genesys helps stop customer frustration, drive efficiency and accelerate business innovation. For more information, go to http://www.genesyslab.com.

About Alcatel-Lucent
Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) is the trusted partner of service providers, enterprises and governments worldwide, providing solutions that deliver voice, data and video communication services to end-users. A leader in fixed, mobile and converged broadband networking, IP technologies, applications and services, Alcatel-Lucent leverages the unrivalled technical and scientific expertise of Bell Labs, one of the largest innovation powerhouses in the communications industry. With operations in more than 130 countries and the most experienced global services organization in the industry, Alcatel-Lucent is a local partner with a global reach. Alcatel-Lucent achieved revenues of Euro 17.8 billion in 2007 and is incorporated in France, with executive offices located in Paris. For more information, visit Alcatel-Lucent on the Internet: http://www.alcatel-lucent.com