Cisco teams with Lucent… really

Hell hasn’t frozen over yet (as much of the U.S. has, this week), but once-vicious competitors Cisco Systems and Lucent Technologies have engaged in their very first partnership.

Deal terms were not released, but under what appears to be a strictly defined resale agreement, Lucent will integrate into its existing wireless infrastructure product family Cisco’s Packet Data Serving Node, Gateway GPRS Support Node, and MGX 8000 Media Gateway and ATM Multiservice portfolio. Lucent will resell these products to its existing wireless carrier customer base.

The MGX 8000 might prove to be the key piece of the deal, in that this product family can aggregate and transport IP and ATM packet voice traffic over the 2.5G and 3G networks being built by Lucent for its customers.

The deal may reflect less a new spirit of cooperation than of need on behalf of both companies to bolster revenue growth in any way possible during the ongoing economic crisis. The agreement is in part a bow by Lucent to Cisco’s expertise in packet technology for mobile networks, but perhaps equally acknowledgement by Cisco that Lucent’s relationships with wireless carriers provide an avenue to revenue for these products, which it would be harder for Cisco to match alone.

The two companies, in addition to professing copious amounts mutual admiration in their announcement of the partnership, emphasized that the partnership was a multi-year, non-exclusive deal.