Cisco and IBM Expand Global Services Alliance to Collaborate on Maintenance Services in 46 New Countries

Cisco® (NASDAQ: CSCO) and IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the expansion of their Global Services Alliance and their collaboration to provide product maintenance services for mutual enterprise customers in 46 new countries. This collaboration builds on the success that IBM and Cisco have seen within the United States and means that IBM customers who purchase Cisco networking technology solutions will now get a globally consistent level of IT infrastructure support. The collaboration includes IBM’s extensive service-delivery capabilities and Cisco’s technical expertise in one integrated support offering.

“This is a significant evolution in our Global Services Alliance,” said Karl Meulema vice president, Cisco services marketing and channels. “Providing a collaborative maintenance service offering means our mutual customers will no longer need to choose between Cisco networking skills or IBM multivendor systems integrator capabilities. Instead customers get the collective expertise of both companies, combining the best of both worlds.”

“We have been working together on these service offerings in the United States for the past three years and are excited to offer a broader global customer experience by expanding our efforts into additional markets around the world,” said Robert Kritzer, vice president, IBM-Cisco Strategic Alliance, 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 ’IBM managed maintenance solution for Cisco products’ provides us with a single escalation point for maintenance services across multiple vendor products that comprise our global reservation system,” said Charlie Majane, director of technical services at Carey International, a leading global provider of limousine services and luxury ground transportation. “Our clients count on Carey’s reservations specialists and customer care representatives 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. IBM and Cisco’s collaborative service relationship has simplified our billing and service delivery processes spanning 65 countries.”

IBM will market and sell this services offering under the name “IBM managed maintenance solution for Cisco products,” while collaboratively delivering the service with Cisco. 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 Centers by highly experienced network specialists, trained by Cisco, who have access to IBM’s technical support resource base. Cisco will provide, through IBM, such benefits as worldwide, 24x7 escalation to the Cisco Technical Assistance Center, access to cisco.com, ongoing operating system updates, advance hardware replacement, and tools and best practices to address network issues. Specific details regarding the “IBM managed maintenance solution for Cisco products” offering can be found at: http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/index.wss/offering/its/a1002560.

Cisco Global Services Alliances

The Cisco Global Services Alliance program has been in place for three years and is intended to increase customer success with Cisco networking technology. The program promotes greater collaboration and alignment between Cisco and its Global Service Alliance partners in order to deliver a consistent level of IT infrastructure support across the network lifecycle.

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, please go to http://newsroom.cisco.com.

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For more information on IBM (NYSE: IBM), please visit www.ibm.com.