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Cisco, IBM to ally

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the two-titans-make-friends dept.

Silverpike writes "Cicso and IBM have announced that they will now partner on networking technologies. All existing IBM networking equipment will cease development and maintain support. Cisco gets IBM networking patents and preference on all new silicon devices. IBM Global Services will now also sell Cicso products. " Lotsa money exchanging hands-2 billion. Cisco starts to use more IBM custom chips, while IBM sells Cisco stuff.

1 of 31 comments (clear)

  1. Re:there goes the competition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3
    Actually Cisco rarely buys "competition". What it tends to do is to buy companies with better technology than its own. It bought Kalpana for its switch technoloy, same with Crescendo. The original AGS was actually a SUN VME machine with odd software.

    I have no problem with the way Cisco does business. If it was to buy Bay Networks off Nortel or Ascend from whoever owns them just now then that would be anticompetetive. The point is that Cisco are actually quite well behaved on the scale of things. Sure they buy a lot of companies, but these companies were never direct competition to them.

    Cisco are the largest IP networking company for a good reason. Their products are good and not too expensive on the relative scale of things. Strategic alliances with Compaq, HP and now IBM can never hurt. Can you imagine what the "Microsoft IP Gigabit Router" would look like? Now stop bitching about Cisco.