Thanks, Mark. Thought so. We'll be seeing a lot more snafu's I'm afraid. In the rush to take up an increasingly complex both from an application standpoint, as well as from the perspectives of internetworking/distribution/security, some of these outfits may be recklessly overextending themselves and not fully appreciating what they are getting themselves into. Right now it's still pretty much a need for them to promote a point and click mentality, driving them. There's still a lot of uncharted territory out there, and they all seem to be making bold claims as to how they will navigate in some of those areas.
Incidentally, ABOV does not compete head to head with EXDS in this respect. At least they haven't thus far, by keeping to their charter, which is: ABOV's focus has been one of providing peering services and being an ISP's ISP, rather than catering directly to the application administration of end user platforms. At one point they vowed never to do that, and as far as I know they haven't yet.
ABOV's is a lot cleaner model than those of the ASPs who must tend to the nitty-gritty administrative and application complexities of end users. Perhaps this will change with the MFNX influence over time. To find out, I posed this question to ABOV's management right after the MFNX announcement. As recently as a month ago they said that they would stay fast to their original ISP's ISP model, and not compete for the end user's dollar. Well see, and FWIW.
Regards, Frank Coluccio |
