HONG KONG--John Giere, chief marketing officer for Alcatel-Lucent, was literally able to show off his company’s new marketing strategy to the world at ITU Telecom World 2006 this week, in not one but two large exhibits, each of which bore the company’s new purple logo, unveiled last week. Giere spoke with Editor-At-Large Carol Wilson at the Asia World Expo in Hong Kong.

On the challenge facing Alcatel-Lucent: This is a big company with a lot of market presence, portfolio capability and R&D might. This company has might across all the sectors. But the challenge is to transform ourselves. We are number one in optical, number one in IMS, number two in Carrier Ethernet, and it goes on. But we need to harness competitive transformation in a way that plays to all our strengths. Operators are changing their business models, they are looking at the service creation layer, and IMS is a part of that, with software modules that will deliver all the personalization aspects of services. What the Internet has done with destination personalization, we think the network can now do with personalization of services, based on an individual’s usage of the network.

On Alcatel-Lucent’s approach to the IP transformation process: First, there is our familiarity with the legacy portfolio, we know where service providers are coming from. Second, we are focusing on how you create a quality of experience. In the VoIP world, for example, people are starting to segment themselves. They may use a Skype or a Vonage service for calls that are less important but for important calls, they will use a higher quality service. A certain percentage of them never go back. We need to be able to deliver the Internet engineered [similar to] telecom. We’ve gone away from thinking about Quality of Service to thinking about the Quality of Experience for the user.

On IP transformation efforts today: We have 41 transformation projects underway today for customers. We can’t just look at best effort services with some quality of service on one end. The cloud can’t just be in the middle – we have to be able to set up a session – connectivity has to be telephony-like. QoE is critical if I’m going to make sure that a cable broadcast customer doesn’t look at IPTV and say it’s like VoIP is compared to telephony today.

On going beyond technology changes: Our major customers engagements with companies like KPN and BT are so comprehensive but you can’t focus on the network pieces alone. The challenge is changing the way you do your business. We sit with the operator and ask them, “What is your belief of the future?’ Then we look at the market requirements for how that would be achieved. The third step is the business model and the revenue creation that needs to take place. The key is, it is a different customer experience depending on what the belief of the future is and what needs to happen to create that. You wouldn’t bring IMS-type solutions to a Vonage, because that’s not what’s required.

On his goals for Alcatel-Lucent: We can go through a list of [vendor attributes] and we can check off every box when it comes to physical capabilities – the things defined by hardware and software. My goal is to check every box on the less physical side – not R&D centers, people, or investment but the hard-to-count value and value-creation characteristics that enable our customers to see us as a competitive partner.

On staying focused during the merger effort: No question integration can be a distracting process. We are very pleased by he job we’ve done so far. Also, if you look at our customers, there is no overlap that is significant. Our product overlap is not as much as you think. Plus, as we move to common, open standard hardware platforms, it’s a matter of moving software, and that’s much easier to do.