Alcatel-Lucent will open a new Bell Labs center outside Tel Aviv, Israel, which will focus on cloud research, the company said on Tuesday. The center is aimed to boost Alcatel-Lucent's CloudBand technology, an open, multivendor platform for network functions virtualization that allows operators to offer secure cloud services. Alcatel-Lucent 's Chief Executive Officer Michel Combes said that Alcatel-Lucent and Bell Labs had realized early on the promise of moving networks to the cloud, but that it would take a dramatically different set of capabilities and innovations to make it happen. Combes made the remarks at the MIXiii-2014, Israel's first combined biomed and high-tech innovation conference which was opened on Tuesday in Tel Aviv. The center "will contribute tremendously to Alcatel-Lucent playing a shaping role in the industry," Combes said. The French telecom equipment corporation said that the new center will begin its operation in a few months in an already operating cloud facility in Kfar Saba near Tel Aviv. Alcatel-Lucent is a global telecommunications equipment company with its headquarters in Paris.