ALU, HP Team UpALU, HP Team Up

ALU's president for Enterprise and Verticals, Tom Burns, told me that ALU brings elements that other HP partners like Avaya and Microsoft lack.

Today's announcement of Alcatel-Lucent's new global alliance with HP ups the ante further in both vendors' struggle against Cisco in communications and infrastructure, and ALU's president for Enterprise and Verticals, Tom Burns, told me that ALU brings elements to this partnership that other HP partners like Avaya and Microsoft lack.In an interview this afternoon, Tom Burns said that by partnering with ALU, HP gains access to carrier markets for optical networking, MPLS and carrier Ethernet that Avaya couldn't bring when it inked an HP deal earlier this year. Similarly, Microsoft's much-publicized $180 million partnership with HP, announced last month (see here here and here), lacks not only these carrier-focused technologies, but also a large contact center element, which ALU possesses via its Genesys subsidiary.

In addition, Burns noted Alcatel offers its "very large [global] footprint." Also, the ability to offer a carrier play lets ALU open doors for HP in future cloud-based and managed-services plays, Burns said.

The ALU announcement was lighter on specifics, at least in terms of product integrations, than was either Avaya's or Microsoft's. Avaya single out specific integrations of its Communications Manager with HP server blades, while Microsoft and HP took to the Interop keynote stage to demo integrations between HP Halo telepresence and OCS, while HP also promised to bring out an IP phone for OCS.

ALU's Tom Burns told me that ALU and HP have established a governance committee for the alliance, "to ensure both sides invest in both market development and solutions development," but he didn't have specifics on the latter.

All told, the ALU-HP alliance "could generate multi-billion euros in net revenues for HP and Alcatel-Lucent over a 10-year period," according to the announcement; Burns declined to split out the enterprise vs. carrier shares of that "multi-billion-dollar" figure.

Finally, the deal includes the outsourcing of much of ALU's own IT infrastructure to HP managed services, which will entail 1,000 ALU positions being transferred over to HP.ALU's president for Enterprise and Verticals, Tom Burns, told me that ALU brings elements that other HP partners like Avaya and Microsoft lack.