James,
"Ciena certainly has products that are duplicated by those of ONIS, but my understanding is that there are others that are not duplicated, and furthermore the revenue generated by the latter is far more than the former."
Although the company is very well funded, I'm not aware of any revenues realized by ONI, although I did see a news release indicating a commitment for $50 million over a three year period. Normally these commitments are subject to field trials. Do you know anything more on ONI's field trials or revenue stream?
Perusing ONI's product descriptions, I see a single metro product, the DTS, and its operating system. The DTS was successfully tested with Cerent's 454 switch (Cisco) and Cisco's IP routers. However, it appears that the DTS does not support Frame Relay, and if so represents a significant deficiency. Ciena's product slate supports all of the protocols listed by ONI including Frame Relay.
The DTS is touted as the "lowest cost" metro system. I wonder how it compares vs Ciena's MultiwaveMetro, and MetroLite. MetroLite is priced so that it would be attractive to not only small regional carriers, but enterprise as well. Anyone have the numbers?
The key benefit to all of this to Ciena is that the Metro market is rapidly gaining momentum, and Ciena will no doubt again lead the pack in best of breed technology, and execution.
Interestingly, the pundits had classified the metro market as burnt toast not too long ago. Funny how things change in just one short year.
Jack
PS: I also noted that ONI is a Silicon Valley firm, as is Juniper. That adds additional fuel to the fire, and makes for a more attractive acquisition.
PPS: Juniper is on my short list of "must own" companies, along with SDL and Aware(VoDSL). |
