Alcatel-Lucent and HP today announced a 10 year new global partnership wherein the two firms will jointly offer telecommunication as well as IT products and solutions to customers. While the agreement is yet to see through all the formalities, the tie-up aims to offer end-to-end solutions to service providers as well as enterprises.

Sensing a strong demand from service providers as well as enterprises over the need for a simplified outsourcing environment for IT and communications infrastructure, the HP-Alcatel-Lucent tie-up will offer a ‘one-stop shop’ to customers in today’s environment where telecommunication and IT infrastructure often overlap each other and there is a need for convergence.

Alcatel-Lucent in particular will take advantage of HP IT and telecom technologies as well as its supply chain efficiencies. Post-tie-up, Alcatel-Lucent claims that it will be able to offer service providers sophisticated solutions based on common technologies for carrier-grade and IT applications resulting in service providers exploiting the advantages of standards-based server, processor and operating system technologies.

HP and Alcatel-Lucent now plan to come up with a global go-to market program aiming to reach out to more and more customers through the strong channel partner network of HP.

Coinciding with the tie-up, Alcatel-Lucent said that it has selected HP as vendor for ALU’s IT infrastructure leveraging from HP’s advanced data centre technologies and its leadership in the managed services domain.

“We expect customers will be able to create new business opportunities and greater efficiencies from this alliance,” said Mark Hurd, HP chairman and chief executive officer. “By combining our deep expertise in IT and communications, HP and Alcatel-Lucent will help customers transform their technology needs into a competitive edge.”

“Today’s global alliance represents a major transformational deal that will deliver great benefits to our customers. IT and telecom are coming together in an unprecedented way and I am delighted to see how we can speed up innovation in our industry,” said Ben Verwaayen, Alcatel-Lucent chief executive officer. “I am also confident that HP will deliver Alcatel-Lucent best-in-class solutions in terms of performance and cost for our IT needs.”