ALE’s Vice President on ‘Bridging the Digital Divide’

Sandrine El Khodry, Vice President – Middle East and Africa at Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise spoke with TECHx for a special feature on ‘bridging the digital divide’. Let’s have a look at the responses we received.

TECHx: How do you see business continuity being redefined in today’s market? As the digital transformation tsunami continues, how is Alcatel-Lucent assisting companies in bridging the technological divide?

Sandrine: Digital transformation is at the centre of interest of all the companies these days. It is a mid-term project which should follow several phases with in-depth work in parallel to adapt internal processes and a companies’ culture. This is key for a successful digital transformation project.

ALE follows the below steps one by one to ensure our customers succeed in such a critical project. 

• Taking the time to understand where the company/customer needs to be or go, guide, and make sure that the infrastructure is ready to operate in a digital and cloud environment.
• Provide a solid digital and secure solution in place to maintain and preserve the confidentiality of the accessed data from everywhere. A company that starts this journey needs to rely on experts in the digital transformation domain, to be well advised and oriented toward their goal.
• In parallel, ALE advises customers that they need to work on an internal company culture and change to the new way of work which is crucial to make this project a success.

TECHx: Wi-Fi 6E is barely off the ground, and we’re already talking about Wi-Fi 7. What are your thoughts on this?

Sandrine: Let’s take a look at the WIfi evolution from the 5 to 6: we notice that it is essentially about increasing the speed by three times. With wifi 6E vs Wifi 7, it is also about enhancing speed but also increasing more data stream capacity. I believe that wifi 6E is already a much utilized technology that needs to be explored on the field and take its time before migrating to the wifi 7. While technology is revolutionizing the way we work, I believe it is crucial to explore existing technologies before moving to another upgrade. But of course, the choice here depends on each company needs and requirements.

TECHx: What is your company’s most distinguishing feature that sets it apart from its competitors?

Sandrine: What sets ALE apart is our capacity to adapt to our customers’ needs and the reliability, flexibility and return on investment of our solutions. With more than over 100 years of existence, ALE has evolved over time and offered innovation to our customers. Our people are highly skilled, and our people turnover is very low, which helps us maintain a deep knowledge and market understanding which is rarely present anywhere else.

TECHx: What role does the channel partner ecosystem play in your company? What does Alcatel-Lucent do to empower its partners in the face of a changing business landscape?

Sandrine: Our channel partner ecosystem is vital for our business as our business model is 100% indirect. The channel is our only way we sell to customers. We accompany our partners on all aspects of a sale – from the initial need detection until the integration of our solutions. ALE partners are very loyal to us; the average duration of our Partnership is around 15-20 years – almost making them a part of the ALE family. We invest in training them regularly and ensuring certifications. We hold regular sessions via webinars to inform and educate them about our products roadmaps, news, etc.

We also involve them in our thought process, market needs and strategy building. We compensate and reward our best performing partners to ensure we maintain the motivation and help partners increase their profitability.