[September 20, 2000]

Cisco, NEC Announce Global Alliance For Enterprise Voice Over IP Solutions

Cisco Systems, Inc. and NEC Corporation announced an alliance designed to provide enterprise customers with a cost-effective strategy for seamless migration to a single IP-based voice, video and data infrastructure.

Through the newly established alliance, Cisco and NEC will work to achieve a smooth integration of NEC communications products including PBXs, applications and devices with products based on Cisco AVVID (Architecture for Voice, Video and Integrated Data), including Cisco CallManager. The collaboration includes global sales and marketing programs, interoperability verification between products based on Cisco AVVID and NEC's voice networking products, and the creation of innovative applications in the areas of call control, media integration, IP phones and computer telephony. In addition, NEC's worldwide channel and systems integration resources will be used for installation and ongoing support of these solutions.

"This noteworthy alliance between two global leaders in data and telecommunications in the enterprise network arena provides customers with true converged multiservice networks," said Kazunori Kiuchi, associate senior vice president and executive general manager of NEC Networks. "NEC's prominent global position in the telecom industry, combined with Cisco's IP leadership for voice and data services, delivers an entirely new level of investment protection to our customers, providing an assured migration path to IP telephony and interoperability with Cisco's IP architecture."

"By expanding our relationship with NEC to include collaboration on the Cisco AVVID vision, we are able to provide our joint customers with a cost-effective IP telephony option that taps NEC's extensive channel and systems integration capabilities," said James Richardson, senior vice president of Cisco's enterprise line of business. "In addition, the joint development agreement component of this alliance pools the voice and IP expertise from both companies to rapidly bring innovative new IP-based applications to market."

The Cisco-NEC relationship aims to globally expand the collaboration the two companies have historically demonstrated at a regional level. In Japan, NEC has a broad OEM arrangement with Cisco, providing joint solutions to the market. In the United States, NEC is one of the largest system integrators for Cisco; and in Australia, NEC and Cisco operate under a joint marketing agreement.

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