Cisco, IBM Team

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Cisco® (NasdaqGS:CSCO - News) and IBM (NYSE:IBM - News) 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."

Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO)

IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM)