Cisco Systems Inc said Friday its partnership with Alcatel SA was as strong as ever, despite press reports that the networking giant was dissatisfied about how the co-operation between the two companies was working. Charles Giancarlo, Cisco’s senior VP, global alliance told ComputerWire that Alcatel remained one of the company’s largest resellers in the enterprise market, and that their relationship continued to grow. Commenting on press reports that Cisco was about to break off its partnership with the telephone switch giant, Giancarlo said that Cisco had been hoping to extend its alliance into the service provider space, but Alcatel’s recent partnership announcement with networking rival Ascend Communications Inc had upset these plans. Now we’ll have to tread more cautiously, he said, we’ll still deal with Alcatel in the service provider space but the relationship won’t be as broad as in the enterprise market. With voice and data markets increasingly converging, Giancarlo said it was difficult for networking companies like Cisco to form partnerships in the competitive service provider space. He added that Cisco was open to an alliance but that, for now, it was going it alone.
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