From theStreet.com....
"One possible target is Fore Systems
(FORE:Nasdaq), with a market cap of $2.8 billion
and revenue of $635 million. Fore Systems is hardly
small -- it has a full sales force and legacy business
with corporations -- but its technology would make
a snug fit.
"Fore would complement [Tellabs' cross-connects]
very nicely," says CIMI's Nolle. Already Tellabs has
rigged its cross-connects for ATM traffic. Fore
Systems might benefit from such a combination: It
has superior ATM switches, but as a small
company, it has not garnered lucrative contracts
with the large carriers that Tellabs has served for
years. Many in the industry regard Fore as a prime
takeover target.
Queried about Fore, Birck said wryly, "From what I
hear, they have halfway-decent technology." A Fore
official did not return a call for comment.
Birck says he is particularly interested in network
routers, which manage data traffic in a more
sophisticated fashion than switches. Wilmington,
Mass.-based NetCore is field-testing a router that
Nolle says would serve as a nice bridge between
Tellabs' current technology and Internet systems.
NetCore intends to ship the product by late June.
Since Siemens bought Argon Networks last
month, NetCore is perhaps the last viable candidate
in its niche."
thestreet.com |
