Juniper Networks and Avaya have signed a joint development pact that will see the two networking firms pool their efforts to fight market leader Cisco Systems.

The deal, announced yesterday but yet to be signed, will see the two companies resell each other's products and services. This expands upon an existing relationship that involved product integration work on specific contracts.

Avaya is a leading player in the call centre and IP telephony market while Juniper competes with Cisco in the high-end router and firewall markets. By combining forces the two companies reckon they can deliver more attractive converged communications products and services to the enterprise market. The pair also plan to integrate Avaya's communication applications and endpoint devices with Juniper's routing and security kit.

"The Avaya partnership also supports our enterprise Infranet model that combines network, application and endpoint intelligence to control network traffic for secure and assured delivery of applications," said Scott Kriens, Juniper's chief exec. ®

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