Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Rainbow Takes on Zoom and Microsoft Teams with New UX

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (ALE), one of the market leaders in cloud communication solutions, recently announced an exciting update for its flagship collaboration platform, Rainbow

Rob Scott

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (ALE), one of the market leaders in cloud communication solutions, recently announced an exciting update for its flagship collaboration platform, Rainbow. The enhanced solution will further improve the collaborative experience between Rainbow users while supporting teamwork and safe working practices.

In a world where remote and distance working is more popular, each evolution of the Rainbow platform ensures that it continues to be as flexible and accessible as possible. ALE knows that the needs of users are constantly evolving, and the team wants to stay one step ahead by offering the capabilities and features they need for digital transformation.

I caught up with EVP of ALE Cloud Communications, Moussa Zaghdoud, to discuss the new UX and the future roadmap for ALE.

Saving Time and Getting Things Done

[caption id="attachment_30288" align="alignright" width="201"] Moussa-Zaghdoud Moussa Zaghdoud[/caption]

The enhanced UX for Rainbow focuses on four key areas, including video, ergonomics, audio, and time management. According to Moussa, the new UX, available today, recognises the fact that teams are using more of these critical tools for communication and collaboration every day.

“These services need to be comfortable and intuitive for everyone to use. Customers need to instantly feel the benefit from using these tools. To accomplish that, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise looked at all the details of our UX. We have dark mode now, a clearer UI, and everything is enhanced to deliver simplicity and comfort.”

From advanced audio and video experiences that employees can launch at the click of a button, to improved solutions for time management, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Rainbow offers everything that teams need. “Everything we do gives the user a sense that they’re saving time and getting things done.”

When creating bubbles in Rainbow, teams can connect 20 people in less than 5 seconds. The annoying process of waiting for everyone to get into a meeting is over. This facilitates a better experience overall.

Rainbow Users Receive Improved User Experience

Moussa told me that new Rainbow interface is better both on the backend and the frontend. This includes supporting a bigger number of participants in the meeting rooms. Video conferencing capacity has gone from 50 to 120 people, with 150 within the next sprints.

“You can also see up to 12 people in grid mode now, and we’re increasing the number of webinar options too. The grid view functionality is a big deal for people today. However, what we think is more important is the focus on the active speaker. Not everyone will want to show their video at the same time. The people who do share video will want to ensure that the person talking gets the most attention.”

The new and enhanced version of Rainbow offers a streamlined design for user experience and better collaboration. An updated professional interface is a good touch. Updates, including intuitive icons, quick action buttons, simplified navigation, and more, make the platform more user friendly too. To enhance comfort and increase user adoption, Rainbow also has a variety of more bespoke options to choose from, including customisable character sizing on screens useful for low vision people

AI Powered Collaboration

The meeting features available from Rainbow are getting more intelligent all of the time. This includes the arrival of a new service to automatically regulate participant speaker time. Groups can choose to display the amount of time each participant spends speaking, so people know when to dial back and give other people a chance to take the floor.

“Duration times will show people who are speaking too much that they need to slow down. It also shows people when they need to increase their contribution”

Tools like this are part of Rainbow strategy to deliver better time management within productivity and collaboration tools. Everything Rainbow does focuses on making sure people can save time and make the most of it.

The arrival of employee role badges for people in a Bubble or team means that colleagues can find the specialists that they need much faster. There’s also an easy-to-use meeting scheduler now available within the Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Rainbow environment. This one-click instant meeting planning service automatically identifies when other conference participants are available for a meeting without leaving the collaboration workspace

Rainbow also allows users to invite participants into a conference, even if the guest doesn’t have a Rainbow account. In addition, users can easily maintain their connections when switching between laptop and smartphone devices seamlessly

By the beginning of 2021, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise also says that the Rainbow meeting solution will be able to host up to 1,000 participants simultaneously. This will make it an excellent alternative to Zoom and Microsoft Teams for Webinar and broadcast presentations.

Leading Cloud Communications in Europe

The New UI for Rainbow delivers genuine value to customers and their teams. Rainbow is already working on further developments for teams, including a new webinar mode. Because data integrity is crucial, the company is also finalizing an end-to-end model for encryption that offers a second layer of security to the already robust system.

Every conversation is fully encrypted, and as soon as you start conferencing, your information is protected, and secure. Another focus point for Rainbow going forward is the desire to become the leading European vendor listed in the UCaaS Gartner Magic Quadrant, a goal which isn’t too far away by the looks of things.

“We’re the only Cloud Services vendor in the quadrant at the moment that isn’t American. Customers are coming to us in search of something that’s based in Europe especially businesses where the data confidentiality is key such as healthcare, governments or education."

"There’s a rising trend for European solutions that provide a viable alternative to the other big players”

The latest updates for Rainbow highlight the Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise vision to provide today’s enterprises with the communication and collaboration solutions that they need for secure and meaningful conversations in any environment. Rainbow will continue to give businesses a powerful alternative to other big players in the collaboration and productivity landscape.

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