Neuf Cegetel Strengthens ICT Portfolio with NextiraOne Alliance

| Nov 29, 2007 | Business Telecom Services - Europe | Competitive Intelligence Report
| Analyst: Joel Stradling

Current Perspective: Positive
Vendor Importance: High
Market Impact: High

Event Summary

On November 27th Neuf Cegetel announced a partnership alliance with France-based enterprise communications integrator NextiraOne, aimed at serving French businesses with full-IP solutions. The companies will conduct joint marketing and promotion activities as well as service implementation including IP-based unified communications (UC) and management for customers with multi-site needs.

Analytical Summary

• Current Perspective: Positive on NextiraOne and Neuf Cegetel’s partnership, because Neuf Cegetel can strengthen its ICT consulting portfolio based on NextiraOne’s integration experience and resources. NextiraOne has a premium-class heritage as the former enterprise support arm of Alcatel, and its strong enterprise PBX experience is a valuable boost to Neuf Cegetel’s position at a time when other French telcos (e.g., Orange Business Services and BT France) are seriously improving their ICT capabilities via acquisition and organic growth.

• Vendor Importance: High to Neuf Cegetel’s corporate services strategy, because the company needed to boost its ICT consulting position in line with the market trend of telcos moving up the value stack into managed systems integration and Unified Communications. Neuf Cegetel’s competitors continue to make progress with offering managed services on top of data networks, and the carrier needed a response to this to remain competitive. The alliance also has the benefit of giving competitive leverage against non-carrier rivals, such as IBM, Avaya and Siemens Enterprise.

• Market Impact: High on the French enterprise services market, because Neuf Cegetel is a major national telco, and NextiraOne a major applications developer and ICT consulting firm with a strong voice heritage. Together the companies will be able to exert more pressure on competitors. In terms of end-users, the French market now has greater choice other than the incumbent for major telecommunications plus information systems integration in a single contract.

Recommended Competitor Actions

• Competitors need to inquire with NextiraOne concerning its intentions to continue as a carrier-neutral vendor for honoring existing contracts and for providing ongoing services and support. The fact that the latest agreement with Neuf Cegetel is non-exclusive opens up a clear avenue for response: i.e., telling customers that the competing providers can also offer projects in cooperation with NextiraOne if that is what the customer desires.

• Orange Business Services should point to its proven experience with delivering IP telephony to multi-site corporations, giving the example of its Airbus customer deployment. The Airbus contract includes migration from traditional PBX to fully IP-based telephony for 30,000 extensions in France and 10,000 extensions in the UK. The carrier should underscore it already has the logistics and systems in place to offer customers a hassle-free contract from a single vendor.

Recommended End User / Customer Actions

• French businesses with multi-site communications requirements should certainly be considering the Neuf Cegetel/NextiraOne proposal, because combined the two companies have a number of strengths to offer. Neuf Cegetel has the national IP infrastructure and workforce, while NextiraOne is a leading voice communications and systems integration company. The market benefits overall from this partnership as there is more choice than ever for large-scale and complex telecoms and IT solutions.

CLIENTS ONLY

Current Perspective

Competitive Positives and Concerns

Recommended Vendor Actions

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