Cisco, IBM to merge Tech Support
By siliconindia   |   Tuesday, 13 March 2007, 17:30 IST
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In a merger of its kind, the world's largest networking company Cisco Systems and the world's largest IT company IBM will combine technical support services for mutual customers. Customers of both companies in 46 countries, including India, Australia, China, Germany, Malaysia, Hong Kong and the UK, will now have common IT support centers. IBM has over 50,000 staff in India with over 20,000 staff at IBM India engaged in various call centre and BPO tasks including IT support for global customers. Cisco has over 5,000 employees. Now the India teams of both the companies could be jointly answering queries from global customers, highlighting close ties between the two. "Customers won't have to choose between going to IBM or Cisco for IT support," said Robert Kritzer, Vice President of IBM Global Services adding that the merger may also give an edge to IBM over rivals like Accenture, EDS, HP and even local IT players when they pitch for future contracts. Cisco could get an edge over Avaya, Nortel and Nokia Networks in similar deals. While the technical support could be provided via IBM Technical Support Centers by network specialists, trained by Cisco, who have access to IBM's technical support resource base, Cisco will provide, via IBM, benefits like worldwide 24x7 escalation to the Cisco Technical Assistance Center, access to cisco.com, ongoing operating system updates, advance hardware replacement, and tools and global best practices to address network issues.

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