Cisco and Ericsson claim expanded business opportunities 3 months after announcing wide-ranging partnership
Cisco and Ericsson announced some progress on their “next-generation strategic partnership” that has led to “new and expanded business opportunities.” Those opportunities have reportedly come from their respective sales forces going to customers with a more robust platform of products and services.
“In the three months since the partnership was announced, close to 200 customer engagements have resulted in multiple recent customer wins, including agreements with operators for mobile IP backbone network transformation, transformation of TV proposition and cable network, modernization of mobile backhaul leveraging Ericsson’s systems integrations and global services capabilities,” Ericsson said of the partnership.
At this week’s Mobile World Congress event, the firms announced a collaboration with Intel on developing “5G” routers targeting business and residential services. Ericsson and Cisco also reported a handful of carrier deals, including one with 3 Italia to upgrade its mobile IP backbone network.
The partnership, initially announced last November, calls for the companies to combine platforms to target telecom operators and reportedly produce at least $1 billion in incremental revenue opportunities for each company beginning in 2018. When announced, the partnership was said to offer a platform including routing, data center, networking, cloud, mobility, management and control, and tap their respective global footprints to “create the networks of the future.” The companies said the network support is to include “5G,” cloud, IP and the “Internet of Things,” and that Ericsson and Cisco will provide teams to jointly work on an initiative targeting software-defined networking, network functions virtualization, and network management and control.
In their update, Ericsson and Cisco said they have push forward on joint go-to-market models and sales force training and are also working towards “tactical planning and global resource build up.” Ericsson also launched its Dynamic Service Manager, which it claims taps intellectual property from both companies to support real-time management of network services using multiple technology and vendor domains. The product is initially set to target multi-vendor mobile backhaul, IP core, and enterprise VPNs, with commercial availability scheduled for later this year.
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