Alcatel Lucent’s announcement at the newly coined Enterprise Connect was very much an eye-opener. The OmniTouch 8082 (dubbed “My IC Phone”) is best described as a combination smart-phone and flat-screen tablet that presents its users with easy access to the traditional functions of a fully-featured office phone but promises a lot more. The 7×4 inch touch-sensitive screen provides a smartphone-like user interface that starts with a home page on which the primary user can organize “widgets” that enable one-touch access to communications features, the contact list, calendar items, email, “favorites” and even a Web-browser.

When the phone ships later this year, its users will be able to shop from an AppStore-like inventory of apps. In the pre-briefing, we were shown a roster of apps that included stock quotes, sports scores, weather and even a Skype client to initiate chat or voice calls from a user’s Skype Contact list. However, the large touch-sensitive screen provides creates a place for multiple vertical applications to be mounted “on the glass.” One of the featured verticals on display (so to speak) addressed the needs of the hospitality industry, where an in-room phone could also serve as the thermostat and control the room temperature, etc.; or as the remote control for the entertainment system (allowing selection of channels, ordering pay-per-view or even electronic checkout services).

A lot of thought had clearly gone into the industrial design. The device had a very slick look about it. The metal base even had extra microphones that could be used to detect and filter out background noise in an office environment.

In advance of the roll-out of the phone, Alcatel-Lucent is making the SDK (software development kit) that the folks in its labs have been using to build the widgets available to members of the Alcatel-Lucent Applications Partner Program (AAPP). The can register here to gain access through the developer portal. The application environment is considered “open” in that it supports Javascript, HTML5 and Ajax, as well as an “open API” published by Alcatel-Lucent for both the phone and other conformant devices. It is a process that is managed by Alcatel-Lucent to assure quality and security and to make sure it runs in conjunction with the new phones and the OmniPCX Enterprise Communications Servers.

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Tags: Alcatel-Lucent, Recombinant Communications