IBM to support Cisco gear in 46 countries

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 13 March 2007 10:34

IT Industry - Market

Cisco and IBM have expanded a global services alliance that provides, in the US, product maintenance services for enterprises that are customers of both companies to offer these services in a further 46 countries.

IBM will market and sell and be the primary customer contact for the joint offering under the name "IBM managed maintenance solution for Cisco products". IBM will provide the customer with consolidated call management for all networking devices and will retain responsibility for resolving customer issues. Technical support will be provided via IBM technical support centres by network specialists, trained by Cisco, who will have access to IBM's technical support resource base. Cisco will provide, through IBM, 24x7 escalation to the Cisco Technical Assistance Centre, access to cisco.com, ongoing operating system updates, advance hardware replacement, and tools and best practices to address network issues.

The two companies claim that this expansion "means that IBM customers who purchase Cisco networking technology solutions will now get a globally consistent level of IT infrastructure support." According to Robert Kritzer, vice president of the IBM-Cisco Strategic Alliance for IBM Global Technology Services, "Our relationship with Cisco allows us to provide our customers with a single resource to seamlessly and rapidly integrate business processes, industry knowledge, information technologies and the intelligence of the network."

The Cisco Global Services Alliance program has been in place for three years in the USA. IBM already has a very close relationship with Cisco: it is a Cisco global resale partner and global commerce partner; Cisco Certified Gold in 51 countries and Silver in four countries; one of Cisco's top partners in terms of Cisco Certified personnel; and one of Cisco's largest systems integrators worldwide.

The 46 countries are Australia, Iceland, Poland, Austria, India, Portugal, Belgium, Indonesia, Romania, Bulgaria, Ireland, Singapore, Canada, Italy, Slovakia, China, Korea, Slovenia, Cyprus, Latvia, South Africa, Czech Republic, Liechtenstein, Spain, Denmark, Lithuania, Sweden, Estonia, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Finland, Malaysia, Taiwan, France, Malta, Thailand, Germany, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Greece, New Zealand, United States, Hong Kong, Norway, Vietnam, Hungary, Philippines.

 Further information here.