Teaming up to seize those accounts

Sometimes you have to wonder if every reasonably successful maker of next-generation carrier-class equipment is destined to wind up in some tiny corner of Cisco, Lucent or Nortel Networks.

If you think that's a chilling prospect, there's some good news on the horizon. Some breakout vendors are finding an alternative by teaming up with one another instead of selling out to the big boys.

Last week, for example, packet telephony leader Sonus Networks and metro switch maker Riverstone Networks signed a marketing agreement that they positioned as a way to offer "a seamless, central-office voice-over-IP solution."

The two vendors will go to market together selling, first, the Riverstone RS 8000 and 8600 Switch Routers. These boxes, designed and tested for NEBS Level 3 and ILEC approved, combine wire-speed multilayer switching and routing with hardware-based prioritization, filtering, and quality-of-service features over a variety of WAN interfaces, including TDM, ATM and packet-over-SONET.

They will add the Sonus Packet Telephony Suite, which includes the GSX9000 Open Services Switch, the PSX6000 SoftSwitch, and the SGX2000 SS7 Signaling Gateway. The two companies also say they will combine to develop 24-7 support for their service-provider customers - always a major challenge for new vendors.

As a spin-off of Cabletron, Riverstone is not entirely a start-up, and as such it brings a lot of connections into incumbent carriers that Sonus needs. But it's a two-way street - Sonus brings Riverstone a good entry into some next-generation carriers, including Williams and Global Crossing and a number of new metro carriers, such as BroadBand Office, that Riverstone also has been targeting.

Of course, the announcement is only the first phase of this effort. Many partnerships don't go anywhere, and the key will be if these two companies sustain the momentum in bringing together a complete set of capabilities for central offices and points of presence that service providers can truly see as an alternative to Lucent and Nortel. We'll be watching carefully.

Sonus/TTI deal expected to advance softswitches
The Edge, 11/13/00

View from The Edge: The acquisition race heats up
The Edge, 11/06/00

Cabletron spin-off aims for next-generation carriers
The Edge, 06/05/00

Archive of the View from The Edge