Mindmeld, here is what I suspect will happen which I've stated before. You are right that in the immediate short term, the competition will come from innovative start-ups who are working feverishly on developing better mousetraps.....but guess what? The big equipment vendors are watching these young start-up companies like hawk right now. Do you really believe that companies like Siemens, Ericsson are NOT aware of what is happening? Even as I type this, it would not surprise me if there are multiple discussion going on right now between these product R&D upstarts and the giant equipment mfg's.
Companies LIKE JUNIPER will be taken out by a Carrier or Hadware vendor -- say Siemens, Ericsson,Alcatel,Fujitsu, NT or LU.
IMO, it is easier for SP vendor to buy their way into the Enterprise Router market.........if CSCO did it, why can't LU or NT? It is already happening (Ascend, Bay, Qtera) and it will pick up speed. It's lot easier for NT and LU to buy Sycamore and Junipers of this world than it is for CSCO to buy Siemens or Alcatel of this world........pretty obvious I would say.
Mark my word very carefully, there will be lot more high-flying acquisitions in the coming year and it would not surprise me one bit (sorry for the pun) if NT makes more enterprise router acquisitions.
As Mr. Fun stated, the market for W.A.N. and routers are huge and growing and I don't see any major equipment vendors (including LU) to be capitulating to Cisco.
If the voice & data truly merges, it would be a folly for the traditional voice vendors to just sit there and let Cisco take complete control over the router market -- but this is such an obvious observation that I cannot believe it will happen!
THE GAME IS NOT OVER..........IT IS JUST STARTING!! |
