Alcatel-Lucent, Hewlett-Packard eye partnership

In a potential match of the hyphenates, Alcatel-Lucent and Hewlett-Packard said they are working toward formal agreement to pursue a 10-year, multi-billion-dollar sales partnership that would involve joint distribution of IP telephony, unified communications, security and contact center products, according to Network World. These solutions would be sold as products by H-P resellers into the large and medium-size business market, or as managed services by A-L into the service provider market.

Alcatel-Lucent hopes to cut costs by using H-P IT solutions and also adopting PC-industry standard components into its service provider products. H-P also will be hired to upgrade and manage Alcatel-Lucent's internal IT systems, and potentially supply its partner with new data center technology.

There were also reports this morning that Alcatel-Lucent might transfer as many as 1,000 jobs over to H-P as part of the deal.

For more:
- Network World has this coverage [1]