Hi Gary,
Yes, Cisco has complete product overlap with Ascend, but Lucent does not, not by any measure. Lucent needs Ascend, especially Ascend's ATM switches.
LU has its own heavy duty core switch, RAS/RAC (Livingston), and now Yurie
(SA product line competition). I cannot conceive of LU buying Yurie and
Livingston, two ASND competitors along different products lines, and then buying
ASND. I think the LU bid for ASND probably already occurred ($30-35) and
was rejected.
If you're talking about the Globeview, it's for the deep core and is not a multi-service switch. It is a relatively simple switch that has switching horsepower, very little else. It does not have the functionality of the CBX500--not even close. As far as Yurie, they make a campus ATM switch which is priced less than half the CBX500. It's good for a corporate customer that needs to manage a few PVC's here and there, but it's not even close to being a carrier-class switch.
Come October 1, I plan to hold a buttload of Ascend shares in anticipation of a Lucent takeover. Nortel buying Bay makes this even more compelling. I've always felt Ascend was much less of a fit for Nortel than for Lucent, because NT has already invested a lot of $$ in the same ATM technologies that Ascend has been successful with. NT is trying very hard right now to emulate Ascend with their Passport/Magellan ATM switches. They haven't been successful yet, but they are trying very hard.
bucky89 |
