Collaboration between humans and objects: A safety asset

Communications platforms interact with the software and infrastructure ecosystem to ensure comprehensive enterprise security.

Communications platforms interact with the software and infrastructure ecosystem, harmonizing human communications and IoT to ensure comprehensive enterprise security.

Communications solutions have long been linked with cybersecurity, requiring companies to deploy significant efforts (such as reverse proxy elements, session border controllers and highly secure but dedicated terminals) to secure employee working periods, both on and off company premises.

However, these solutions have become much simpler for clients to adopt and deploy with secure flows widely accepted by security teams, platforms that are secure by design, data sovereignty for European platforms and deployment in private edge data centers. And now, they also significantly contribute to providing additional services for the physical security of people and assets within the enterprise.

These platforms can harmonize human and object communications to create new services tailored to specific user contexts.

Facilitating communications

Due to greater efficiency in transmitting information, communications platforms can now connect to an enterprise’s software and infrastructure ecosystem. For example, they can use the data network to connect multiple people on a video call. But there are many previously unimagined value-added services that are now possible.

Take the example of a building alert, established to track such things as an intrusion at a university, the temperature of a specific object, or video-enabled motion detection. The platform instantly connects people based on their expertise, regardless of their location, and gives them immediate access to contextual alerts (such as data, photos, videos and files) in the shared real time workspace—allowing them to collaboratively make the best decision.

Inclusion, contextualization and rapid action

Three key aspects enable these new services to be delivered:

• Inclusion: A communications platform interconnects people, objects and business processes. This allows real time information transmission between IoT devices and individuals, or the storage of conversations in a CRM. Additionally, connecting an existing or cloud-based telephone system ensures user inclusion, no matter their available means (such as digital, fixed, mobile, business applications, SMS and alerts with follow-up). The goal is for targeted individuals to efficiently join the decision-making space.
• Context: The openness of collaboration platforms allows individuals to be connected to business and IoT data. These data are valuable to inform individuals when making decisions and can be directly sent to the collaboration space (either in real time or regularly, depending on the problem they are addressing). Providing real time context to the right people is a strong driver for optimizing business processes. This context can take the form of selected business data, object data, real time camera feeds, drone images, files, AI-generated summaries and so on. Any information available within the company can be routed if it is organized and identifiable for the collaboration purpose.
• Reaction: Communications platforms can also connect to the company’s infrastructure. This could be the telephone infrastructure, allowing employees to control their phones, even while mobile, and never miss a call. It could also involve the network or building automation to notify support engineers of any issues in real time. This enables them to fix problems directly in the network configuration with the help of an assistant robot that suggests possible solutions in real time and instantly implements their decision. Another example is connecting to the video protection infrastructure, selecting relevant feeds for people at a specific moment, and sending them in real time into a video conference as if the camera itself was another conference user (such as allowing for camera movement and zooming in).

Enhancing human collaboration with the ecosystem

This integration into the company’s ecosystem opens new service opportunities across all industries. It ensures that humans remain the decision-making coordinators while automating the real time distribution of accurate information.

In universities, security managers aim to keep students and staff safe. In the event of a building intrusion, the communications platform can, within seconds, send an alert to all student PCs and mobiles. It can also quickly play an audio message on all fixed phones in the university, notifying staff and students of the intrusion.

In local authorities, event organization often involves handling unexpected situations. During a crisis, the organizer can launch a crisis unit that automatically selects participants based on time and location, alert them, and invite them to the crisis unit. At the same time, contextual crisis information (such as files or photos) is sent in real time to the unit. The most relevant surveillance camera feed is selected from the surveillance system and sent in real time to the unit for participants to view. The exchanges are recorded and archived to be made available to an AI that summarizes the crisis management progress.

For a regional transport authority, bus electrification comes with new risks related to batteries and their supervision. Battery temperature data is collected and analyzed. In the event of a battery fire risk, quick action is required to prevent it from spreading within the warehouse. The communications platform sends alerts to the supervisors via SMS, mobile calls and crisis unit activation. The temperature data and problem location are automatically and regularly sent to the unit.

Trust and security

These varied examples demonstrate that companies now seek to enhance user experience and usability in a security response system that often significantly limits investment performance.

Enterprise communications are rapidly evolving in two ways: The enterprise’s ecosystem is being made available to users within their collaboration interface, and real time communications are increasingly being integrated into this ecosystem.

In summary, decision-makers' trust in sovereign collaboration platforms greatly opens the door to a new generation of services that effectively integrate people, processes and objects, creating valuable connections across different parts of their ecosystem.

The Rainbow platform by Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise is a platform developed in France, used by over 3 million users. It hosts data close to its customers in numerous operational data centers in France and on all continents. The Rainbow platform offers not only communications and collaboration services within the enterprise and on the go, but it also connects enterprise infrastructures such as networks, communications servers, connected objects, building operation systems, video surveillance cameras, drones and more to provide new services to users.

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise relies on a strong global network of 3,000 partners composed of distributors and integrators who deliver holistic solutions tailored to their clients' specific needs across various verticals.