Alcatel-Lucent has launched Rapport™, a software-based, open 
platform that gives large enterprises and service providers a new, and much more flexible way to deliver communications and collaboration services.
Rapport enables the communications network to become a platform for innovation. Voice, chat, video conferencing and sharing can be accessed by application developers using open application programming interfaces (APIs) and simple software development kits (SDKs).
Rapport goes beyond simple virtualization to fully embrace the cloud with a single software platform that can be deployed on any commercial, off-the-shelf hardware, dramatically driving down the cost and complexity of deploying and managing communications services.
Rapport is based on a fully re-architected version of Alcatel-Lucent’s IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) software, the foundation for the company’s Voice over LTE (VoLTE) solution.
Bhaskar Gorti, president of Alcatel-Lucent’s IP Platforms business, said: “Rapport removes the barriers for service providers to offer more engaging communications services to their customers, which can be delivered seamlessly using any device and across any network.”
Rapport strengthens the communications business case for service providers by enabling them to support VoLTE/mobile, fixed, and WiFi services with a single, more agile cloud communications platform, significantly simplifying and reducing the cost per subscriber to deliver these services.
Rapport uses a network functions virtualization (NFV) approach, and works with NFV platforms such as Alcatel-Lucent’s CloudBand to launch VoLTE and new services rapidly to both consumers and businesses and scale dynamically as subscriber demand dictates.
