Alcatel-Lucent's Bell Labs will open a new 'antenna' office in the heart of US technological innovation, Silicon Valley, California. A team of Bell Labs researchers will be co-located at Alcatel-Lucent's site in Mountain View and will conduct focused, globally-orientated research aimed at evolving networks to deliver new cloud-based applications and services.

The Silicon Valley center will be the third Bell Labs antenna office to open this year, following the opening of the Cambridge video facility in the UK in July, and the Bell Labs virtualization research facility in Israel which opened in May.

Marcus Weldon, President of Bell Labs & CTO Alcatel-Lucent said: "We know that the full impact of cloud computing will radically change not only our industry but also the way we live, work and communicate. As we add this third antenna location to our existing Bell Labs network we expect to tap both the innovative spirit of the rich west coast-based technology community as well as the wealth of real-world knowledge from Alcatel-Lucent's successful IP Routing business and its SDN start-up, Nuage Networks, to significantly change the course of the future."

According to the firm “in the past networks have been designed only to deliver specific and discreet services like voice and data. In the emerging cloud-based services era, networks have to be designed and optimized for both the delivery of traditional offerings but also for new as-yet-unknown services. SDN will play a critical role in the way networks of the future are built.”

Alcatel-Lucent's Bell Labs maintains a leading role in research and innovation with a focus on how networks should evolve based on the changing behaviors and demands of the end user. Research at 'antenna' locations such as that in Silicon Valley contributes to this overall objective by centering on one major industry issue, company officials said. “These smaller, highly-specialized locations foster a more nimble 'start-up' like environment to allow researchers to actively engage with Alcatel-Lucent's businesses, other Bell Labs researchers and external stakeholders such as enterprises, universities and other research organizations.”