Why ALE & KHIPU?
The Foundation of Reliability.
In sectors like Healthcare and Higher Education, the network is everything. ALE’s ‘Digital Age Networking’ provides the stability these sectors demand, while KHIPU provides the managed intelligence layer.
- Decades of Expertise: As a long-term Partner, KHIPU has designed and supported some of the largest ALE estates in the UK and South Africa.
- Mission-Critical Uptime: ALE hardware is world-renowned for its reliability, ensuring your core clinical or administrative systems never face unplanned outages.
- IoT & OT Containment: ALE’s unique Intelligent Fabric and Shortest Path Bridging (SPB) technology allow us to automate the secure onboarding and isolation of thousands of IoT devices.
- Unified Communications: Seamlessly integrate ALE’s Rainbow™ cloud or on-premises telephony with your data network for a unified user experience.
Featured ALE Solutions.
OmniSwitch® Series
(LAN & Data Centre):
From the ruggedised edge to the high-capacity core, OmniSwitch provides the high-availability foundation for the modern enterprise.
OmniAccess® Stellar
(Wireless)
High-performance Wi-Fi 6/6E with distributed intelligence – no centralised controller required, eliminating single points of failure.
OmniVista®
Network Management
A single pane of glass for network-wide visibility, automated provisioning, and deep analytics.
Rainbow™
by Alcatel-Lucent
A secure, cloud-based UCaaS platform that connects people, machines, and processes across your organisation.
Specialist Services by KHIPU.
We don’t just supply ALE; we ensure it is optimised for your specific industry challenges.
- Legacy-to-Modern Migration
We specialise in phased upgrades, moving your organisation from legacy ALE hardware to the latest Digital Age platforms without downtime. - Intelligent Fabric Design
Utilising SPB (Shortest Path Bridging) to create a zero-touch network that simplifies moves, adds, and changes.
- 24×7 NOC Monitoring (KARMA™)
Our proprietary monitoring tool is deeply integrated with ALE hardware, alerting our NOC to power supply failures, fan issues, or throughput bottlenecks before they impact users. - Certified Engineering
Our engineers hold the highest ALE certifications, ensuring every deployment follows vendor best practices for security and performance.
Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise FAQs.
Why is ALE often chosen for Healthcare and Hospitals? More
ALE is chosen because of its extreme reliability switching capabilities. In a hospital, where life-saving equipment relies on the network, ALE’s ability to perform software updates and hardware swaps without taking the network offline is a critical advantage.
What is Shortest Path Bridging (SPB) and why does it matter? More
SPB is a networking standard that ALE excels in. It simplifies network design by eliminating the need for complex protocols like Spanning Tree. For the user, this means a much more resilient network that can recover from a link failure in milliseconds.
Can KHIPU support our older, ‘End-of-Life’ ALE switches? More
Yes. While we always recommend moving to modern, secure platforms, our engineering team has deep legacy knowledge. We can provide ‘Maintain’ level support while helping you build a strategic roadmap for a phased migration to the latest OmniSwitch models.
How does ALE Stellar Wi-Fi compare to controller-based solutions? More
Unlike traditional Wi-Fi that requires a central controller (a potential single point of failure), Stellar Wi-Fi uses a distributed intelligence architecture. If one access point or a ‘master’ fails, the network automatically re-organises, ensuring your staff and students stay connected.
Is the ALE Rainbow platform secure for public sector use? More
Yes. ALE Rainbow is designed with high standards of data privacy and sovereignty. It is frequently used by government and healthcare bodies who require secure, compliant communication that integrates directly with their existing on-premises infrastructure.