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The markets are still waiting for the promised new strategy roadmap from Alcatel-Lucent's incoming CEO, former BT chief Ben Verwaayen. While much is hoped from the Dutchman's leadership, the company is already indicating some of the key elements of its plan to resuscitate its fortunes in the teeth of downturn and fierce price wars.

Managed services will take an even more central role than they have already, although ALU has stepped up its activities in this area in 2007-8, eyeing a market that could be worth $18.5bn by 2012, and which is dominated by Ericsson. Andy Williams, president of ALU's services business group, said the company would expand its portfolio in 2009 and especially target a greater presence in north America.

As well as outsourcing deals for carrier networks, which are popular in Asia and increasingly in Europe (ALU just won a major deal with Verwaayen's former company, British Telecom), the vendor will offer options that are likely to be more appealing in the US, where full outsourcing is regarded more warily. New or expanded services will include managed capacity, such as application hosting and network expansion; professional services, especially in mobile TV and video; and network integration, which includes energy efficiency and maintenance.

To support this effort, ALU will be hunting acquisitions and partnerships, especially companies that can extend its catalog still further, into areas such as application architectures and inventory management, and into specific verticals - ALU has its eye, in particular, on large utilities' networks.

As equipment sales become less attractive in terms of margin, ALU has not, so far, been in the vanguard of the move towards LTE (though it is, with Motorola, a market leader in WiMAX). While Ericsson, Motorola and NSN storm ahead with technology trials, ALU has been quiet, and many expect it to pursue the LTE opportunity, when that becomes real from 2010, via a joint venture. However, it is already pulling back from the most likely partner, Japan's NEC - the two firms were due to form a full joint venture around LTE, but this has been scaled back to a series of joint development projects.

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