IBM and Cisco get cozier in telecom, large enterprise space

Building on a strategic alliance first announced in 1999, IBM and Cisco Systems plan to release a jointly developed offering called the Cisco Assurance Management Solution, which integrates Cisco's Active Network Abstraction (ANA) device management and mediation technology with IBM's Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus and Netcool/Precision management software, Alan Ganek, chief technology officer at IBM Tivoli Software told CIO magazine. The companies expect the product to gain traction among telecom carriers and large enterprises looking for a better way to manage heterogeneous networks. "IBM's overall partnership with Cisco has largely been around the services area," Ganek said. "This new one really gets into our development teams in the software world." The first version of Cisco Assurance Management Solution will features network fault monitoring, trouble isolation and real-time service-level event management.

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