Here is something no one knows: Is the ongoing slowdown or recession a 2 quarter thing or will it prolong to the end of 2001? Cisco said several quarters. As I said, longer term (3 to 5 years out), this discussion is irrelevant; near term, can one pick up RBAK at 20s again? Yes, probably in March in my opinion.
It all depends on if you believe the Cisco killers are helping kill Cisco or not. Perhaps they are a part of Cisco's forecasted 2001 which should be stirred into the mix as well. Companies like Redback, Juniper, Ciena, Extreme, Avici, Procket, etc... . If you mix them all together and the other companies in the networking space as well as all the companies doing quite well that are up against Cisco in their various segments of the industry, I imagine that the pieces of pie at the potluck line are not so easy to load up on Cisco's paper plate as they used to be.
The following link provided an interesting look at IT budget increase for network spend and how e-business is driving the forecasted 9.9% (or $550K average) increase for full year 2001. To put that in perspective for network IT spend, 2000 saw a 9.5% increase, 1999 saw a 10% increase and 1998 saw a 7% increase. We'll only know in retrospect come January 2002 what full year 2001 network budget increase spend turns out to be, but you can access the recent survey results here as well as the previous years:
nwfusion.com
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