Lucent/IBM Form Worldwide Alliance

Lucent Technologies' NetworkCare Professional Services and IBM Global Services announced a worldwide alliance to help an emerging group of service providers - called CyberCarriers - more quickly and effectively deliver nextgeneration network-based services to enterprises and consumers.

The alliance, effective immediately, combines IBM's expertise in integrated technology solutions, especially data center planning, design, integration and technical support, with Lucent's expertise in planning, design, integration and technical support of complex, carrier-grade network infrastructures.

Today's announcement is the first step in a major CyberCarrier initiative by Lucent Technologies to help ensure design and delivery, in conjunction with leading industry partners, of end-to-end network and Internet data center solutions for CyberCarriers.

"Both new and traditional service providers need to meet the explosive demand for next-generation services," said Pat Russo, executive vice president and CEO, Service Provider Networks, Lucent Technologies. "To do that, they must link high speed data centers with very high speed optical and wireless networks to eliminate Internet bottlenecks. Few companies are better able to help CyberCarriers thrive in this environment than Lucent and IBM." CyberCarriers are service providers who offer a combination of high speed networking and data center services, including servers, storage and network transport, to Application Service Providers, Internet Service Providers, Web hosting companies and others. Those companies in turn sell services such as hosted e-mail or e-commerce to enterprise and residential customers.

Booz Allen & Hamilton, the management and technology consulting firm, estimates that CyberCarriers could spend $133 billion on data center and network infrastructure improvements during the next three years, about half of that for professional services.

"Our goal is to bring the customer a complete solution - to create for them a modern day power plant for e-business - so they can count on us to support every stage of their evolution," said Georges Khoury, general manager, Integrated Technology Services, IBM Global Services.

John Drew, executive vice president and CEO of Lucent's NetworkCare Professional Services, said, "This alliance gives CyberCarriers what they value most - quick time to market - through a comprehensive portfolio of network and data center professional services." To that end, Lucent has developed a CyberCarrier Reference Architecture, working with customers and industry leaders, which defines the network and data center elements required to deliver next-generation services. The architecture -- a blueprint for building end-to-end CyberCarrier networks -- is the framework for the services alliance.

The alliance will draw on the CyberCarrier Reference Architecture in developing customer solutions. The companies will take advantage of multivendor products to fulfill customer requirements. Offerings the alliance will focus on include these solution areas:

• Business Planning Solutions - develop business and technology strategic road maps that help CyberCarriers to enter and expand into new businesses, and grow revenues;
• Platform and Application Management - develop and support platforms and applications that help ensure rapid expansion of markets such as e-commerce, unified messaging and hosting;
• Engineering Solutions - best practices for selecting and deploying high-performance, high availability solutions in networking hardware, software and transport services in order to speed network applications to market;
• Security Solutions - edge-to-edge security for continuous e-commerce applications, as well as threat monitoring, intrusion detection and firewall management through 7 x 24 remote security operations;
• Performance Solutions - desktop-to-server performance assessment services and instrumentation tools to tune data centers and networks to meet Quality of Service (QoS) metrics, service level and application level commitments;
• Site Operations and Facilities - build, operate and manage CyberCarrier network operations centers, data centers, network facilities and local or remote network maintenance centers to keep a network running at peak performance; and
• Solution Integration - prime contractor project management covering all components of a multivendor CyberCarrier solution.

Company Information

IBM is one of the world's largest information technology companies, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. IBM offers a wide range of services, solutions and technologies that enable telecommunications service providers and equipment suppliers to take full advantage of the new era of ebusiness. IBM Global Services is the world's largest information technology services provider, with 1999 revenues of more than $32 billion.

Services is the fastest growing part of IBM, with more than 138,000 professionals serving customers in 160 countries. IBM Global Services integrates IBM's broad range of capabilities-services, hardware, software and research-to help companies of all sizes realize the full value of information technology. For more information on IBM, visit www.ibm.com.

Lucent Network Professional Services offers service providers and enterprises a comprehensive portfolio of network consulting and software solutions for the full lifecycle of a network, including planning and design, implementation, and operations. It provides professional services for complex, multivendor environments and software solutions for network and application performance management. Additional information about the NPS group is available from its Web site at www.lucent.com/networkcare.

Lucent Technologies, headquartered in Murray Hill, N.J., USA, designs and delivers the systems, software, silicon and services for next-generation communications networks for service providers and enterprises. Backed by the research and development of Bell Labs, Lucent focuses on high-growth areas such as optical and wireless networks; Internet infrastructure; communications software; communications semiconductors and optoelectronics; Web-based enterprise solutions that link private and public networks; and professional network design and consulting services. For more information on Lucent Technologies, visit its Web site at www.lucent.com.