The Defense Information Services Agency (DISA) has announced the winners of the large GIG-BE contract, and laughing all the way to the bank is Sycamore Networks, which has been desperate for some good news. Incidentally, GIG-Be stands for the Global Information Grid - Bandwidth Expansion. The contract was expected to be around $850 million but in the end it is going to add up to about $600 million, according to RBC Capital Markets.

DISA was looking for four primary components: long-haul transport and switching, optical digital cross-connects (ODXC), multiservice provisioning platforms (MSPP), and IP Routing. RBC asserts that Alcatel, Siemens, Fujitsu and Nortel were left out in the cold because they were not American companies. And that is just fine with Sycamore, Ciena, Cisco and a motley crew of others who have gotten a piece of the action.

Here are the winners and loosers as ranked by our friends at RBC.

* Sycamore got the Optical Cross-Connect business. Beat out Ciena’s CoreDirector and Lucent’s LambdaUnite. Estimated at roughly $80 million, the ODXC portion of the contract is relatively small contract but will have a significant impact on SCMR.
* Ciena got $150-$200 million Long Haul Transport business.
* Cisco Wins Multiservice Provisioning Platform (MSPP). Cisco’s 15454 pummeled Lucent’s DMX product as well as Ciena, Fujitsu, Alcatel and Nortel. Size of the contract is mere $50-$100 million.
* Juniper and Cisco Split IP RoutingJuniper appears to have won the core routing while Cisco has won the edge.
* Lucent, Corvis are big losers.