Alcatel-Lucent, the French telecom equipment company, is to buy NetDevices, a privately held producer of device gateways for large businesses. Financial terms are undisclosed.

The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of Alcatel-Lucent's fiscal 2007 (subject the usual standard closing conditions) When the dust settles, NetDevices employees and products will be integrated into Alcatel-Lucent's Enterprise Business Group.

NetDevices was founded in 2003 by three Cisco veterans and has 45 employees in Sunnyvale and Bangalore, India.

NetDevices' flagship product is the SG-8 Unified Services Gateway, which blends security, routing and converged IP communications in one box. It occupies the same market as Cisco's Integrated Service Routers and Juniper's Secure Services Gateway (USG vs. ISR vs. SSG for you acronym lovers.)

Alcatel acquired its New Jersey-based rival Lucent Technologies for about $11.6bn last November. The company last week posted a loss of $10.8m for the first quarter, tciting effects from the merger for the red ink. ®