Doug, its very tough to track FORE now in terms of product demand, since they are part of GEC. I would guess they are in somewhat the same predicament as NN in trying to go up against LU, CSCO, NT: lack of product offering breadth. However, they have had a viable core offering for quite some time now (40Gb/s). Their main problem was they targeted service providers and carriers too late. Their initial thrust was "ATM in the enterprise LAN". Like Token Ring, this found a niche market, but has since lost out to 100Mb and 1G ethernet, for the most part.
Before their takeover by GEC, they were attempting the refocus in the higher growth SP and carrier segments. And they have achieved some significant wins with the 40G switch. My guess is they will be first with a true 100G switch, but this is only a guess. I am fairly certain it will be either LU or FORE. Again, I need to look at NT. They could surprise us.
As far as R&D, FORE was always the leader in terms of sheer bandwidth switch fabrics. In addition, I believe they hold the most ATM related patents, although its tough to say if any of these were of the revenue generating variety (must license by other ATM vendors).
Mgmt. Similar to NN from what I had heard. Very R&D oriented, and lacking somewhat in the sales and marketing focus. We all know now (thanks, CSCO) that this was not right. Its not always the best technology that wins...
Gary |
