One of the BIG dogs needs help............
techweb.com
Lucent Is An Enterprise 'Extra'
(11/19/99, 7:51 p.m. ET)
By Salvatore Salamone, InternetWeek
Murray Hill, N.J.--Lucent's got a lot to crow about these days. Unfortunately, that doesn't include its enterprise IT business.
At a recent corporate strategy briefing at company headquarters, Lucent was basking in impressive financial results. The company just wrapped up a year in which it saw revenue grow 20.4 percent, to $38.3 billion. And net income on that revenue was $3.8 billion, up 46.4 percent.
A feeble showing in enterprise networking was one noteworthy blemish. Most of the company's growth has come from its core markets: equipment and services aimed at telcos and Internet service providers. But it's a different story when it comes to enterprise networking.
"We are an afterthought in the enterprise data market," said Rich McGinn, Lucent's chairman and CEO. If Lucent's enterprise role were listed as part of movie credits, McGinn said, "We are down there with the best boy and key grip."
Lucent ranks itself behind Cisco, Nortel, 3Com, Fujitsu, and IBM in enterprise networking.
McGinn said the enterprise data part of Lucent's business has shown little growth.
"In hospital terms, our enterprise data efforts have flat-lined," he said.
Many in the industry think a quick fix--if Lucent is looking for one--is to buy a large data networking company. But that is not the otherwise-acquisitive company's grand plan.
"We are not looking to acquire a legacy data networking company," said McGinn.
Instead of one quick and dirty acquisition, the plan instead is to grow the enterprise business through a number of more modest moves.
"We'll focus on internal investment in our own research, more partnering, and selective acquisitions," said Bill O'Shea, executive vice president and CEO of enterprise networks at Lucent. "We don't have an acquisition strategy; we have a business strategy that will use acquisitions."
The main enterprise networking areas that O'Shea is targeting are converged networks and VPNs. For example, he pointed out that when it comes to converged networks, Lucent will leverage its strong position in fields like call centers, voice messaging, voice systems (PBXs), and unified messaging.
"We've already moved some of these systems into the converged networking arena," O'Shea said. Lucent has equipment in Internet call centers around the world and has shifted its Definity line from simply operating as a proprietary PBX--as it had several years ago--to an IP-enabled message system.
One enterprise networking area where O'Shea sees great opportunity is software. Specifically, Lucent will "focus on communication software that ties infrastructure to applications," O'Shea said. This includes customer relationship management software and universal messaging.
LGTO's got some BIG plans...........
techweb.com
Legato Gets Ontrack
(11/19/99, 11:23 a.m. ET)
By Joseph F. Kovar, Computer Reseller News
Legato Systems, a data storage management software company, on Thursday said that it will acquire Ontrack Data International.
Ontrack, Minneapolis, is a manufacturer of data recovery software and service solutions.
Ontrack is expected to offer Palo Alto, Calif.-based Legato desktop tools to enable it to expand into the ASP market, Legato said.
The acquisition, the latest in a string for Legato, is part of a strategy formulated over a year ago under which the company plans to acquire the technology to get into SANs and clustering in a big way, said Jim Chappell, vice president of Legato's data availability division.
"Ontrack has years of expertise on how to get data off adisk, both in-lab and remote, including over the Internet," Chappell said. "We feel it is important to offer customers options, as not everybody does their backups and they need a way to recover if the drives do fail. Also, often a backup looks right, but a logical failure could hide problems. Ontrack can go to the disk system to find logical failures"
Ontrack's products and services will continue to be available through Legato's distribution channels, Chappell said.
The transaction, expected to close in late January, will be accounted for under purchase accounting. Legato will offer 0.1491 shares for each share of Ontrack's common stock, along with about $20 million cash, bringing the value of the acquisition to about $134 million.
Legato's stock fell 13/16, to 75 15/16, on the Nasdaq Thursday. |
