Good intentions
No corporate buzz-word was left unturned as HP announced it intends to form a ten year global alliance with French Telco giant Alcatel-Lucent to "help customers leverage the convergence of telecommunication and IT."
Apparently, once the agreement actually gets agreed to, the two companies will "launch a global go-to-market program," that will "enable end-to-end transformation for service providers and enterprises." There was lots more of that sort of thing in a press release that could easily have been half the length.
"By combining our deep expertise in IT and communications, HP and Alcatel-Lucent will help customers transform their technology needs into a competitive edge," said HP CEO Mark Hurd.
"IT and telecom are coming together in an unprecedented way and I am delighted to see how we can speed up innovation in our industry," added Alcatel boss Ben Verwaayen, who was CEO of BT until last year.
There doesn't seem to be much more detail right now, but the mention of things like IP telephony and unified communications being integrated with HP IT solutions makes this look like a competitive threat to Cisco, which is the market leader in these areas and traditionally has a strong relationship with HP.
