California State University – CSU - the largest four year university system in the United States, is to transform its information infrastructure used by almost 430,000 students and 44,000 faculty and staff in 23 campuses by selecting Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) to provide the IT network.

With campuses covering the length of California from San Diego in the south to Humboldt in the north, CSU is an extremely diverse university system. Supporting its Access to Excellence plan, CSU campuses will operate on the same standardized local area network equipment from Alcatel-Lucent for the next eight years.

The migration to the advanced, new high-speed network will also enable CSU to add cloud computing technology in the future, serving its communities more efficiently and at lower costs. In its IT specification, CSU emphasizes standards compliance-based networking and broad features to meet specific educational and business requirements, along with security, availability, and performance. These requirements will also enable a future move to the cloud, optimizing how CSU stores, manages and deliver its data across campus and beyond.

Educators are leading the charge towards dynamic use of cloud resources. According to an Alcatel-Lucent study of more than 6,000 enterprises which is the subject of a soon-to-be-released Wiley book, "Transforming Business: Big Data, Mobility, and Globalization," some 45 percent of educators said they would prefer to use cloud-based solutions that allow multiple devices to access data independent of where it's located, rather than having the application tied to device specific storage.

Michel Davidoff, Director Cyberinfrastructure CSU, Chancellor's Office said, "CSU's IT network project is a long-term investment strategy, not just a reaction to current budget issues. Alcatel-Lucent equipment provides a simple yet flexible and eco-friendly design using a small number of platforms in diverse roles to maximize best practices across our campuses."

Davidoff added, "We expect to gain significant operational efficiencies with this Alcatel-Lucent infrastructure that will also open doors to the future with its flexibility. We can easily evolve the network to provide more advanced services in the future with minimal investment, such as linking kiosk technology or security. And as a result, we expect to avoid considerable costs over the next eight years."

Along with cost avoidance of equipment spending, CSU expects to experience 'green' savings in the range of millions of dollars over the eight-year agreement by deploying Alcatel-Lucent's highly energy-efficient OmniSwitch product line.

It is anticipated that four campuses will be completely upgraded to Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch products over the next year. The overall project is estimated to be worth $22 million over the next eight years.