Clayton Homes Chooses Alcatel Enterprise Solutions

CALABASAS, Calif., Sept. 28 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Alcatel today announced that Clayton Homes, the largest manufactured housing company in the U.S., has chosen an Alcatel enterprise network solution for a highly-available network that addresses the company’s rapid business growth, its efforts to remain competitive, and its expanding workforce.

Based in Knoxville, Tennessee, Clayton Homes builds, sells, finances, and insures manufactured homes. Its network is based on the Alcatel OmniSwitch 7800 and the switch’s smart continuous switching technology that maximizes network uptime and allows the company to process the thousands of credit applications and loan documents it receives annually from its 400 sales centers nationwide.

“Continuous network operation is essential to the mission-critical nature of processing loan documents and credit applications. The issue is important because our customers are often considering several options and a delay in processing a loan could mean we lose a home sale,” said Harvey Rench, senior network engineer for Clayton Homes. “Alcatel’s focus on high-availability and switch security gives us the confidence to deploy applications that give us an edge over the competition and satisfy our customers.”

Alcatel’s OmniSwitch solutions are also allowing the company to use a network-based fax system that enables complete electronic document processing. This new application is allowing Clayton Homes to dramatically reduce paper costs and process more applications more efficiently.

Rench added that Clayton Homes’ network also supports a rapidly growing headquarters workforce — which has doubled to 1,200 users in the past three years. With its built-in virtual LAN (VLAN) capability, the OmniSwitch 7800 allows him to divide the network into manageable workgroups, and its high-throughput backplane gives it the capacity to support more users, increased use of Gigabit Ethernet connections, and a future 10-Gigabit Ethernet backbone.

“High network reliability is critical for the business process improvement that is driving the increasing productivity levels needed to compete in business today,” said Tom Burns, Senior VP and GM of Alcatel Network Infrastructure Business activities. “Alcatel can help Clayton Homes push the envelope in terms of leveraging a resilient enterprise network to gain a significant competitive advantage and can offer these benefits at the industry’s best value.”

About Clayton Homes

Clayton Homes is a vertically integrated manufactured housing company with 32 manufacturing plants, 393 company-owned retail outlets, over 1,000 independent retailers, 88 planned manufactured housing communities, and financial services operations that provide mortgage services for 290,000 customers and insurance protection for 105,000 families, from coast to coast. Clayton Homes manufactures and distributes a full spectrum of affordable housing including these fine brands; Clayton, Schult, Oakwood, Marlette, Crest and Golden West.

About Alcatel

Alcatel provides communications solutions to telecommunication carriers, Internet service providers and enterprises for delivery of voice, data and video applications to their customers or to their employees. Alcatel leverages its leading position in fixed and mobile broadband networks, applications and services to bring value to its customers in the framework of a broadband world. With sales of EURO 12.5 billion in 2003, Alcatel operates in more than 130 countries. For more information, visit Alcatel on the Internet: http://www.alcatel.com/.

Alcatel Press Contact

Ed Essa Tel: (818) 878-5472 ed.essa@ind.alcatel.com

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Alcatel

CONTACT: Ed Essa of Alcatel, +1-818-878-5472, ed.essa@ind.alcatel.com

Web site: http://www.alcatel.com/