Cisco Systems and Sprint announced today they have taken their relationship to a new level with the carrier becoming the first service provider to achieve the Cisco IP VPN Multiservice QoS Certified status. Additionally, the companies said they have signed a three-year extension on their strategic relationship.

This certification level required Sprint to go through a third-party assessment that proved that its MPLS VPN service meets Cisco best practices and standards for delivering quality of service. Randy Ritter, vice president of product management at Sprint, said the company wanted to verify its network performance in part to assure customers that its existing service level agreements (SLAs) are solid.

“While we offer a strong set of SLAs and those are structured for real-time performance, Cisco has engaged a third-party that shows our MPLS VPN service meets those standards,” he said. “It gives customers another proof point. We think that’s very important and a first for the industry.”

The certification also is being wrapped up as part of Sprint’s Data Simplification initiative, which will allow the carrier to offers a series of corporate applications like intranets, extranets and secure remote access over a 100 percent Cisco-based global IP/MPLS network. At the core of that network is Cisco’s much-touted CSR-1 router. The process also provides an indication as to its strategy after its merges with Nextel and spins off its local access lines.

“It really allows us to price based on bandwidth and not the protocol,” Ritter said. “This is a first major step in convergence from a service provider perspective. Over time I would expect more applications to be put onto that common core.”

From a technological strategy perspective, the Data Simplification initiative will allow Sprint to run multiple protocols at the edge of the network but actually reduce the overall number of data products. However, because everything is running over a common core, it significantly reduces the risk of stranding assets, Ritter said.

For Cisco, the extension of the Sprint contract solidifies a relationship that at one time was on shaky ground. During Sprint’s ION deployments in the late 1990s and early into 2000, the two companies often were at opposite ends of the technology spectrum. The current extension though, not only firms up Cisco as primary supplier of the core gear, it integrates much of customer premises equipment as part of Sprint’s service strategy.

Among the latest CPE likely to be included in that are wireless-enabled integrated service routers that were launched in early May, according to Jeff Spagnola, vice president of service provider marketing for Cisco.

“When you look at the ISR line, those are three different platforms all with the ability to support VoIP as well as security feature as well as the MPLS support,” he said. “The key is to build that MPLS core with something that’s going to last you many years.”