VP recalls Alcatel Lucent Center's 25 years in Lisle
Alcatel Lucent's Network Software Center marks its 25th anniversary in Lisle on Sunday.
That milestone means more than years of hard work, the merger of several parent companies, the ebb and flow of a dynamic workforce and time spent in the community.
That center has been pivotal in developing wireless technology that has led to what you have today. If it wasn't for the work done at the center, you may not have the type of mobile phone in your hand.
"This center has been a lightening rod for software in the business," said Michael Cooper, vice president of marketing for Alcatel Lucent's Convergence Business Group in Naperville and Lisle. Cooper also is a 30-year veteran of the company, since it's early AT&T days before the breakup.
Cooper remembers working on huge CRT screens on his desk. Today, he downloads what he needs into his laptop and often works at home.
The wireless technology developed at the center has improved equipment so much, it also changed the way we work and live, he said.
The center, located west of Naperville Road and south of Warrenville Road in Lisle, opened Sept. 30, 1982, with then Gov. Jim Thompson and other state, local and company officials marking the moment. Costing around $52 million, the center's 560,000 square feet was designed to house 2,400 employees.
The Switching Division of the old Western Electric was authorized in March 1979 to construct the new center to consolidate the network software development and support work previously housed in four leased facilities, company archives say.
Those workers were from the Northern Illinois Works on Western Avenue in Lisle; the Divisional Data Center in Warrenville; the Switching Software Center across Warrenville Road; and the Product Engineering Control Center at Indian Hill.
In 1979, Chicago was the first major city to be served completely by long distance offices. It was predicted at that time that by 1981, half of the company's customers would be served with such offices. Western Electric was the largest telecommunications manufacturer, employing 161,000 people nationwide at the time. The company produced and installed equipment for 23 Bell System telephone companies that managed 80 percent of the nation's telephones, company archives said.
Telecommunications software in the 1980s was moving from instructions to simply transfer calls to providing advanced features, including three-way calling, call forwarding, call waiting and speed calling.
Cooper said the center also offered the first opportunity for engineers and others workers on the phone network to see it as a whole, instead of working on just switches or routers or other pieces.
He also saw how the Bells broke up. The company morphed from AT&T to Lucent Technologies and then to Alcatel Lucent. The changes in technology also radically changed from wires to wireless.
But as the times changed, so did the workforce at the Naperville and Lisle campus. It had about 10,500 workers before the tech bust. Today, the campus has dwindled to around 4,000.
Regardless of the dark days, the company has continued to move ahead with innovations, said Cooper.
"More and more of what we're doing will be based on software," he said.